Skip to main content

Investigating One Feminist's View of "Sexist" Video Game Tropes

Nine months ago--June 2012--, feminist vlogger and pop-culture critic, Anita Sarkeesian, riled the video-gaming community when she proposed a Kick-Starter project to investigate the sexist tropes of women in video games. The modest $6,000 proposal outraged some among the online community, calling it "exorbitant", "excessive", & "undeserved" (since most YouTube game-reviews are made by fans for free) but by the end of the KS project, nearly 6,000 supporters donated close to $160,000 to Sarkeesian's project.

What exactly set Sarkeesian's proposal apart? What launched her project into lucrative overdrive? 

While noting the malignant "sexism" that is rife and altogether obvious in classic video games isn't anything new--feminist researchers have been writing intelligently about the topic for over twenty years (see here, here & here), Sarkeesian applies a distinct blend of ideological savvy & reference material with a vlogger-style colloquialism to the feminist discussion. This though was certainly not the impetus for Sarkeesian's monetary success. 

What ultimately rocked Sarkeesian's KS project was a campaign-style series of vicious attacks by online "trolls". 

Anyone familiar with internet subculture, online forums, & hyperbolic gamer bellicosity, knows all-too-well the hackneyed criticisms that flood discussion boards & affiliate websites (i.e. Reddit). While troll-comments are everything but new and are rarely shocking, the scale of the attacks extended far beyond the traditional forums. Apparently, a small group of aggressive and childish critics vandalized several of her online sites including her personal website, Feminist Frequency and her wikipedia page. One gamer went so far as to design a game in which the only objective is to punch a virtual Sarkeesian in the face. 

Instead of being cowed into silence, however, Sarkeesian took advantage of this online abuse by emphasizing the degrading & misogynistic comments as "online bullying," depicting her personal victimization as a greater attack on feminism and feministic principles. This emphasis became a rallying call for men & women alike who support "consciousness raising" on issues of social inequality and it consequently paid off in spades. In response to the negative feedback and anonymous vitriol, thousands of sympathetic supporters flocked to Sarkeesian's "cause" with their cash in hand.

Fast-foward nine months, to this week. Sarkessian released her first video (6 months late), "Damsel in Distress: Part 1 - Tropes vs Women in Video Games"--of the proposed thirteen--yielding a considerable viewership. In only 4 days, the video has collected three-quarters of a million views and a whole lot of online-buzz.

Unfortunately, critics and fans alike have been almost entirely excluded from the conversation that Sarkessian started. YouTube comments and ratings have been disabled forcing viewers to reply by writing blog-posts and video-responses. Opinions, as they undoubtably will be on the topic of feminism, were varied and difficult to pin down. While Some criticized the gaming community's lack of tact in responding to the Sarkessian's project, others, like MundaneMatt challenged Sarkessian's choice of censorship, still others offered more nuanced critique of the video's analysis highlighting the limited scope of games referenced (Mario and Zelda franchises) and the wikipedia-grade content of those references (read here, here, & here). Some were disappointed to see the video's absence of counterpoint. Here's an example of a woman chiming in regarding "women of color". 

One rather interesting accusation that cropped up repeatedly in the discussions of Sarkessian's new video was the ironic resemblance of her personal narrative to the "damsel in distress" trope. Since such an observation doesn't address the video's content, it'll be left for others to arrive at their own conclusions. 

For other insightful comments on the video check out self-identified feminist and avid gamer, Jen Bosier's VGW article and Jordan Shapiro's Forbe's article that ties his focus of Jungian psychology in Video games and Sarkessian's first Tropes video. And in news that just surfaced, check out Mike Mika's Wired article, "Why I Hacked Donkey Kong for My Daughter".

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2016 Top-10 TBR...

It’s a well-known fact among readers that personal to-be-read (tbr) stacks only oblige addition, often exponentially, by the veritable property of “I must read this” plus “this, this, and this” and “oh, yeah, this one too”, ad infinitum. One only need glance at the “to-read” portion of any active Goodreads account to see the exhaustive, unremitting lists of fascinating titles readerly folks load on themselves. Each year, tbrs all over the world grow at rates undeniably faster than people have time to catch up on their backlogs. Whether it’s the chase of fresh hype in Adam Johnson’s Fortune Smiles or Yanagihara’s A Little Life , the desire to travel back in time with Robert Graves’s I, Claudius or Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrain , the desperate need to finish a beloved author’s oeuvre—Toni Morrison and David Foster Wallace still beckon from the shelves, the completionist’s impulse to conquer a tome like Don Quixote or William Gaddis’s JR , the curious compulsion to find ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Alex Gibney’s Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief

If you had a vague but unverified sense that Scientology was a bit odd, unhinged, or unearthly; just wait till you hear about “Operating Thetans” (OTs), the intergalactic dictator Xenu and how the Earth is a slave planet for humans who were brought here billions of years ago while cryogenically frozen, dropped into volcanoes, and blown up with hydrogen bombs. And don’t even ask about O-T-T-R-Zero & “exteriorization” during auditing! I might be getting some of my “ theology ” wrong here but then again, that’s why you’ll want to see Alex Gibney’s newest documentary, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief . Based off Pulitzer Prize winning author Lawrence Wright’s newest non-fiction, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief , Gibney’s adaptation seems determined to include as much of the book’s content as possible, which, makes for a superbly in-depth, re-watchable experience (not unlike his other first-rate documentaries: Enron , Mea Maxima Cul...
Post a Comment
Read more

Jesse Moss's The Overnighters

The Overnighters  by Jesse Moss Special Jury Prize --Sundance; 102 minutes Follow Director Jesse Moss with his handheld camera into the provincial town of Williston, North Dakota --population: roughly 20,000; only an hour drive from the Canadian border where winter-nights can drop 20 degrees below freezing. Enter the small, unassuming Concordia Lutheran Church --one of at least five in the state. Meet Pastor Jay Reinke--a plucky middle-aged husband & father with questionable prudence and an undeniable bounty of spiritual generosity toward the downtrodden. Or, at least toward most of them. In broad strokes, The Overnighters tells the story of one religious man’s attempt to serve the housing needs of homeless migrant workers in his small town. In many ways, Moss’s documentary tells a simple story that evenhandedly pits Pastor Reinke and his Overnighters project against the disgruntled congregation, his irritated neighbors, the city council, and at least one intrepid local...
Post a Comment
Read more