FF - Women as Background Decoration
If you haven't watched them already...
Feminist Frequency has posted two new videos about "Women as Background Decoration" as Anita Sarkeesian terms it. The title is slightly misleading, she's focusing on sexualized or victimized women as background decoration.
As such I post this with a warning. I personally found the subject matter in these videos a little more upsetting than her previous videos, which themselves came with trigger warnings.
I wasn't aware of how pervasive this sort of "women as background decoration" was. I haven't played any of the main games she sited. I found the examples pretty damning.
Though maybe there is redeeming information about these games that isn't within the remit of these videos. Again, I haven't played these games. (And as Anita always mentions, it's possible to be critical of a piece of art while finding merit in other aspects of the same piece of art).
Feminist Frequency has posted two new videos about "Women as Background Decoration" as Anita Sarkeesian terms it. The title is slightly misleading, she's focusing on sexualized or victimized women as background decoration.
As such I post this with a warning. I personally found the subject matter in these videos a little more upsetting than her previous videos, which themselves came with trigger warnings.
I wasn't aware of how pervasive this sort of "women as background decoration" was. I haven't played any of the main games she sited. I found the examples pretty damning.
Though maybe there is redeeming information about these games that isn't within the remit of these videos. Again, I haven't played these games. (And as Anita always mentions, it's possible to be critical of a piece of art while finding merit in other aspects of the same piece of art).
Thanked by 1dammit
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On a side note, youtube recommends "Top 10 torture scenes" after watching this, with a thumbnail of a woman's tooth being pulled out with rusty pliers.
Yay society.
You're actively discouraged in the game to kill innocent civilians.
Hitman UI says "Don't kill innocents because we'll deduct from your score", which is relevant due to competitive nature of ranked high scores in this particular game.
Anita kills dancer girls and plays with their bodies to illustrate her point a bit clearer.
Not that I agree with the sentiment of the above video. But it does illustrate some things about the way she fabricated some stuff in this one case.
What does it mean? I don't know. But I don't like it.
"Fabrication" doesn't enter into any of this, because what's being critiqued is the representation of women in these particular scenarios. That representation was built, purposefully. It doesn't matter if it's optional gameplay or not, what matters is those women exist in the game to either be ignored or killed. They're sexualised background decorations!
Ugh. I got 25 seconds into that video and he's already saying shit that marks him as a horrible asshat. No. Just, no.
But my point is that Anita states that the player is actively incentivised to kill the girls in hitman and play with their bodies and shove them into a chest, when that quite simply is false. The player is discouraged. Hence, I now am in a place where I feel I need to cross reference everything she says because she manipulates the facts, and I don't personally know any of the games.
The non playable sex objects aspect however, sexualised background deco, and particularly the racist sexual discrimination is incredibly bad no matter what context you play it in.
But if she really wants to be taken seriously in her endeavour, which I'm pretty sure she does, she shouldn't be distorting facts.
Which is all I'm saying.
In other words, she might have said "In hitman the player is discouraged by score subtractions to kill the innocent dancers, but the option is still available to kill them and play with their bodies if a player is so inclined, hence we still have a problem"
I say again: Whether or not something is optional in a game doesn't matter - it's still content that was created. The context that all of that content is presented in is what's being critiqued here... In Hitman, this is a thing players can do, that's literally ALL YOU NEED to be able to talk about it and critique the context of the women represented in the game. If it was truly frowned on, then it wouldn't be possible (or, the game's context and consequences would make it clear that it was allowing the player to explore horrible things - even then, that's still open to critique!)
Disincentivising something with as weak a requirement as score penalties is actually a gateway to some pretty worrying discussion - does that mean that there are non-score incentives to attack these women in the game? What does it mean if people are enjoying that and only stop doing it because it threatens their competitive scores... Scores which aren't relevant until someone is playing the same level multiple times, online, for leaderboard points, right? Is that really a thing that's impactful in single player, the first time a player reaches that part of the game?
The questions that Sarkeesian is challenging us to ask is "Why are these women portrayed like this in this game? What thought went into that act of creation and what does it tell us about our own worldviews? Are those things we want to accept and are okay supporting? What thought are we going to put into our future acts of creation and have they changed because of this contextual broadening?", not "Hey, which parts of a text can I interpret not as contextual analysis, but as factual statements, thus undermining... Something?"
I understand this is a heavy topic for you and you feel passionately about it, and so do I.
I HAVE NOT ONCE SAID I DISAGREE WITH ANY OF HER ARGUMENTS BASED ON MY CONCLUSION THAT THERE IS MISINFORMATION IN HER VIDEO ARTICLE!
In fact I agree with all of it.
My point is simply that in the case that there is misinformation, there could be more misinformation, and I do not have the time or resources to cross-reference it all (nobody does, unless they somehow make a living out of proving her wrong), and she should avoid that at all costs in order to minimize doubt cast upon her arguments.
That's it.
I don't disagree on any of the arguments that she's made, and hence there is no possibility to infer ad-hominem from anything I've said, because I HAVEN'T SAID SHE'S WRONG.
But this is seemingly the kind of discussion where anyone who tries to discuss is treated with disrespect and hostility, so why not just lock down the thread's posts and put it up as a sticky, since discussion is clearly not a part of what's going on here.
I'm not trying to be hostile, I'm just seriously hoping that this isn't step 1 on the "attack the crap out of Anita" train. Because, like I said above, I don't get how that's relevant (nor would I mine a horrible video like the one you linked for useful info. You clearly have a stronger stomach than I do ;)
I'm curious about that situation, and how the designers dealt with it.
Also, does not receiving points mean your character is weaker or missing the better arms and ammunition? How do the points matter to the player?
If there aren't consequences, or the rules of the game force players to harm innocents, then I'd say losing points is a fairly weak a disincentive. In that case it's not in the game world. It's not expressed within the world, but in a wrapper around the world.
But I think deducting points is better than not deducting points at all (and obviously much better than rewarding points, like GTA5 did).
Though I personally think Anita's point can still stand without her mentioning that rule. Yeah knowing it paints Hitman in a slightly less abhorrent light.
But I don't personally think that it's omission undermines her argument. Her argument isn't that Hitman is abhorrent, but that in Hitman these things are designed to happen and are represented in a certain way. And that's essentially still true (assuming I'm not missing something).
I don't mean this as an attack on you @eSculpt . This is my opinion in this discussion.
http://guides.gamepressure.com/hitmanabsolution/guide.asp?ID=18039
lots of info here, but I can't really say anything from experience, because I haven't played it myself
I'd still like to know, If you alert one of the girls in that changing room, do you have to harm the others to avoid being discovered?
i.e. Does a mistake on the player's part mean harm for the innocents around him/her ?
as far as I can tell, you're not really avoiding them, but rather the bouncer at the far end of the room
Reading a bit into it, it kind of seems as though once you've alerted someone, all the npc's are alerted, so killing the girls at that point wouldn't do the player any good. He'd need to go hide until the alert calmed down and all the npc's returned to their idle spots eventually.
Warning. A few sex workers, and some armed enemies, get killed in this level. The map layout in one spot is designed to illicit humour from killing a stripper.
I bring this up, because I'm not sure that points are a strong disincentive for players not to murder sex workers. Saarkesian brought up the point that these are playgrounds, as such players are inclined to play with the toys provided. I think that's what's happening here.
It seems like players might first murder a lot of sex workers, and then try the level in a more optimum way later (in order to maximize score).
AGAIN. This is horrific. I FEEL TOTALLY GROSS LOOKING THIS UP, but I wanted to know what Hitman sex worker levels played like.
Yeah, I am cherry picking the Let's Plays that seem to focus on violence against women.
But it seems like most of the strip club videos focus on that (I haven't seen a Let's Play where the player doesn't kill sex workers):
Warning, this guy boasts that if he gets 100 likes he'll punch his sister. He got over 5000 likes and a million views. Expect that sort of content.
[Edit ] the Official Playstation playthrough didn't commit violence against innocents.
[Edit Edit] Even in the Official Playstation playthrough the player kills a stripper on purpose.
To be clear. The interchangeability and the way sex workers are used in games like GTA5 seems to me to be worse than what happens in Hitman Absolution (in terms of the rules the designers laid out). But I think there's still an awful lot to criticize about the way Hitman Absolution represents sexualized and victimized women.
Yeah can't deal with more than a minute of that last one.
So yeah message received, there is the option of doing terrible things to female sex workers (and all the other characters) in Hitman: Absolution. A player could do it, but it's not incentivised. There are score penalties for doing it, and the score penalties result in you not getting skill/stat upgrades or whatever. That and if you do it in public like these silly guys in the videos you get every armed man in the club firing at you all at once.
Anita made it out as though it's actively incentivised to kill the girls in that room when the contrary is true. Hence misinformation.
The game's not innocent and it has massive issues. I just take issue with the misinformation here. There are a million things she could have said about this game that would paint it in an abhorrent light without saying something that seems to me like misinformation.
But let's say this game was trying to be better about this particular issue, and didn't let the player kill any women in the game.
The entire game would feel broken. Because you can kill anyone. Except the women.
Now if we left out the women overall... What would that achieve? A pseudoreality without women that would bring more outrage.
So we have sexualised characters placed in this level because of the plot of this Dom guy, who owns (?) the strip club. The girls mention him. He's made out to be deplorable by using a very brief narrative of one dancer's plight with this guy. Which is something Anita speaks about. It's not adressed appropriately, and with the finesse the issue deserves.
But how would one solve the issue in this instance? Just avoid the idea of exotic dancing / sex trafficking as a whole? Taboo topic even in a game involving the type of people that are commonly associated with that kind of thing?
(I'm not trying to make a point with these last questions, they're NOT RHETORICAL. I'm actually genuinely asking)
And regarding your point of these levels being like playgrounds.. Alot of games are starting to be more and more interactive which starts to allow for players to interact with (or kill) all the characters in the game. So should designers just leave out the women to avoid the player using women as playthings in their virtual playgrounds? (Again, a real question)
This is the only time she used the word "incentivize" within the two episodes : Are you maybe referring to the argument that Anita makes that because games are an interactive medium they encourage the player to be an active participant in the objectification of women... ?
That's quite a different argument to saying that players are incentivized to kill innocents in Hitman.
Or are you referring to this? Which is also quite different to saying the game mechanics in Hitman actively incentivise killing innocents.
If you have a problem with this, then look at that example I posted with the mirror ball placed directly above a strippers head by the level designer in Hitman. It's an example of exactly what Anita is arguing here. I'd even say it's an example of active incentification on the part of the level designers for killing innocents, but Anita didn't make that argument as far as I can tell.
She does go on to say this: That doesn't exactly describe Hitman, but she is saying that there often are consequences. (Just Cause 2 was the game she was displaying on screen at the time, she's not specifically talking about Hitman obviously). She would definitely view a loss of points as a trivial consequence.
Or maybe you're referring to this: Which is also quite different to saying the game mechanics in Hitman actively incentivise killing innocents. Implicit encouragement is quite different to active incentivization. Anita goes on to explain her statement quite thoroughly.
Here's the transcript: http://www.feministfrequency.com/2014/06/women-as-background-decoration-tropes-vs-women/
Am I missing something? Where's the misinformation?
Of course, it's often difficult to change "just one thing" in a game and have everything else still work as before, so you have to accept that if you want to solve the problem it may not be a quick-fix.
In this case, I thought of a few "solutions", and I am sure real game designers (and the more so the big team they had to develop Hitman) could come up with better solutions. (Also, I'm not saying these solutions are necessarily not-problematic, but I think it at least shows that the space of solutions is wider than many people may claim.
Why not set it in a casino? Same glitz, but without the sex angle. (People "like that" are often also in gambling?)
Or they could actually insert some things in the game that makes the avatar "reflect" on the murders, and perhaps go through some sort of anguish when murdering civilians. The could perhaps punish the player more severely, and perhaps portray it in a way to not A_OK it.
Or why not set it in the day, perhaps during a rehearsal where they are not in full costume (i.e. the women are wearing normal clothes)...
Or they could show the woman "struggle" and "endure" their oppression as Sarkeesian suggests (of course, you may need to add some stuff for other NPCs too to make it consistent); give a window in their stories.
Or you could add some mechanics that if you kill one woman, the others group up on you and are much harder to kill.
Or they could have really hardcore protectors that make it almost impossible to kill a stripper. (Also problematic?)
What about a male strip club? (I know, that is also problematic, but at least it won't be a cliche).
Before I can really deal with the fact that, yes, women are objectified in a game like Hitman, I have to overlook the fact that in the selfsame game the protagonist is a contract killer who collects a fee to murder other human beings. I'm not trying to quash the argument here or start anything but it's really tough to enter into a discussion like this when I have to accept that we're okay with how desensitized we are to everything else going on in a game. There aren't many individuals who complain that the main character is basically an unfeeling automaton running cold-blooded through the levels killing people willy-nilly. You could start arguments off these points if you really wanted to. Men being portrayed as out of touch with their feelings/conscience (stereotype alert) or men using violence as the only means to solve their problems. It just feels like we're okay with the murder stuff but the sex stuff, eh, not so much. In the same breath as saying that there are NPCs created just to be sex objects you could just as easily say that there are NPCs created just to be murder objects.
I remember playing through GTA V - I think you have to visit the strip club in a mission maybe - and, playing the game in front of a whole bunch of my guy mates, seeing that strip tease minigame shown above. It's pretty puerile. Five minutes of boyish laughter later and we're moving forward again, out of the aforementioned strip club. Immediately after this, there's a mission where the player has to torture a person for information. See if you can dig up a video of that. Player's given control over selecting which objects to torture a chap with, how much pressure to apply/voltage to use/blood to let, that sort of thing. This NPC has been created only to be destroyed. This was the bit of GTA which stuck with me, sadly.
I feel like I've rambled a bit, but yeah, this is why I battle to argue about/for/on/with/next to video games, because we're pretty much at the bottom of a slippery slope already, and if we're upset with how women are portrayed in video games why aren't we a bit more bothered about how humanity as a whole's being shown?
/0.02
On the point of male representation of emotionless - That's a topic for a different thread.
Mainly this
"The player cannot help but treat these female bodies as things to be acted upon,because they were designed, constructed and placed in the environment for that singular purpose. Players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters."
After giving it some more thought I've come up with a proposition for you guys. Please poke holes in it, I'm not sure if it holds up.
So in the case that a game is 1. Violent, 2. has women in it, and 3. allows for the player to kill any npc.
Then this scenario where a player can play with women in their virtual playground is possible.
So the only possible solution that I can logically see is to not fulfill all 3 of these criteria, as fulfillment of all 3 allows for this situation to occur.
(GTA and Hitman won't change this, it's part of the core gameplay that they've made huge successes of)
So a game like Doom3 has 1. Violence, and 3. allows the player to kill all the npc's. But the situation can't occur because there are no women.
Final fantasy X has 1. Violence, and 2. Women. But you can't just kill people at random. it's all pretty scripted as to when battles happen. This situation can't occur.
A game like Monkey Island has women in it, but doesn't satisfy the other criteria and this situation can't occur.
So the way I'm seeing it right now, is that when you satisfy these 3 criteria, which I'm sure many games will want to do, then you have this situation. Skyrim is one that also kinda satisfies all 3 criteria. But at least all the npc's in skyrim fight back.
@hermantulleken
"Why not set it in a casino? Same glitz, but without the sex angle. (People "like that" are often also in gambling?)" you said.
So in this case, in a game like hitman, you'll probably still have some pretty girls around that the player could theoretically "play with" hence not solving anything. Unless the issue is the killing of sexualised female characters exclusively, and killing and playing with the bodies of non-sexualised female characters is fine. Which would be a weird double standard to have?
I'm being shown content in a game and it does not fit with the way that content really is and how it should obviously be shown.
In this particular instance, we're taking offence to how women are being portrayed in certain video games but we're overlooking a whole host of other things which are blatantly incorrect. This is a bit of a topic du jour (again, not trying to minimise the argument) but once we've tailored a solution to this problem, we'll move onto something else. Maybe we'll delve into how minorities are shown. Maybe it'll be feelings/emotions/depth of characters. Maybe it'll be healthy environments or strong parental figures in the protagonist's life.
At the end of the day it is entertainment, sure. Movies, TV series, and books are all just as adept at propagating these sorts of tropes as well. It just seems that we're super picky about what offends us at a given point in time.
Women as background decoration is about women not even being people.
These two issues are not the same.
1. Violent, 2. has women in it, and 3. allows for the player to kill any npc. 4. Some or all of the women have been inserted into the game purely for sexual aesthetic or as sexual objects.
It's not a problem per se that you can kill women (in that it is as bad that you can kill anyone), the problem is the role of the women in the game as well.
[quote = PraxisZA]It just seems that we're super picky about what offends us at a given point in time.[/quote] Yes we are, because currently this is a more important topic given the broader societal problems that we are facing (than say good role models or emotional depth). I'd argue that the portrayal of racial minorities and homosexuals is given as much criticism as gender issues. It's just that gender issues are so much more common in media as a whole.
What I'm trying to say is this: most of the time in video games, people are shown as not even being people.
A game like GTA is not going to be sanitized, or made wholesome, its core gameplay is chaotic criminality. A game like Hitman is always going to involve killing people and problem solving using their limp remains. But that can still happen without relegating every female character ever to a powerless victim role. It will still be distasteful, and have other issues and moral questions, but at least have equal opportunity NPC's. With female characters as heroes, villains, average people with lives, and victims too, maybe clothed victims, who aren't there to make sexy dead bodies.
Edit: ninja'd by @LexAquillia
My main point is it seems to me that there are probably good solutions to the problem (and sure, some of them will change the character of the game), and that the solution *they* found does not absolutely, inevitably, follow. In my mind, the argument, "if you address this theme in your game, it inevitably follows that you have to sexualise women in your game and therefor get a free pass" is invalid. Of course, if you set out to make a game where all people are treated as objects, in a setting where woman are treated as sex objects (such as a strip club), it becomes more difficult (as your analysis points out). So maybe you will have to give up the one or the other to make a less horrid game.
It is my impression that if you casually include a theme in (any) work of art, you basically (by the casualness), say "this is normal and ok". If you do not want that to be your message, you have to do more and somehow take the theme on properly. So if I wanted to make a game set in a strip club, I would somehow find a way to show what I think of the situation, or make it clear that I am questioning behaviour. (My first round of ideas don't do this, but this would be my goal).
What she's saying it's human nature to play with the toys a person is given, and the only way to play with the strippers in Hitman is to kill and desecrate them.
Is there any other way to interact with them other than to kill and desecrate them in Hitman? They can also be alerted in which case they run away and presumably alert others, but that's about the extent of it.
And she does mention later that there are consequences for this kind of behaviour.
So really, she doesn't say that players are incentivised to kill strippers, and she mentions that there are consequences for killing strippers (though trivial ones), yet you maintain that it undermines everything she does if she doesn't specifically mention that in Hitman players lose points when they kill strippers.
My logical chain is the way it is, because I've accepted that female representation in games is atrocious, and needs to change.
It's of no consequence to my argument, because what I'm getting at is that any game with violence, women, and the ability to kill any character could involve the player in acts of violence against women. As seen in GTA and Hitman.
If we broaden the scope to include all women then your chain is 100% on.
Going back to your Skyrim example, I don't think Skyrim is guilty of this trope (and hence "better" at female representation) since female NPC's are not there to be explicitly sexual objects (are there any prostitutes/brothels/sex workers in Skyrim?). They are warriors, leaders, traders, mages and more and so have a purpose in the game beyond being just being disposable sex objects (and as such the fact that you can commit violence against them is "less" troublesome than say in GTAV).