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"More than a Damsel in a dress" - Kite Tales. A better video with none of the budget.
- Thread starter LuchaShaq
- Start date
I think this video misrepresents Anita's argument more than anything.
From the very beginning, she portrays Anita's argument incorrectly by insisting that she sees DiD as "a negative formula that should be completely retired from use."
Anita never implies this. In fact, she devoted a segment of the video to outlining that the danger of DiD is in its overuse. That's what makes a trope a trope in the first place.
Also, as much as I want to agree with Kita tales' point that a lack of physical agency doesn't necessarily make a character weak or a DiD, and that many of these female characters bare the title "Princess" which would imply an great deal of importance to their worlds, I can't help but feel that she's kind of living in lala-land in the way she's applying it as a counterargument. Peach and Zelda are princesses, yes, but if we don't see any practical applications of the power this would imply in-game, and only in the lore of said game, does it really matter? They're still being presented as helpless characters with no other qualities of note. This is especially true for Peach - who spends each game waiting for Mario and her mushroom-headed servants to rescue her from captivity...usually to place her back in a big pink room full of cakes, jewels and other princess-y stereotypes. We see no applications of this power other what the player assumes from the title and the acclaim the protagonist gets from rescuing her.
Overall, I think a lot of the backlash Anita has received is due to how she's paced her argument. She keeps getting attacked for being biased and only presenting cases that suit her argument and not showing instances of when DiD is used fairly, examples of powerful damsels, or other examples of powerful female characters who just happen to get kidnapped, despite the fact that this EXACTLY what she said she's going to cover in the very next video.
From the very beginning, she portrays Anita's argument incorrectly by insisting that she sees DiD as "a negative formula that should be completely retired from use."
Anita never implies this. In fact, she devoted a segment of the video to outlining that the danger of DiD is in its overuse. That's what makes a trope a trope in the first place.
Also, as much as I want to agree with Kita tales' point that a lack of physical agency doesn't necessarily make a character weak or a DiD, and that many of these female characters bare the title "Princess" which would imply an great deal of importance to their worlds, I can't help but feel that she's kind of living in lala-land in the way she's applying it as a counterargument. Peach and Zelda are princesses, yes, but if we don't see any practical applications of the power this would imply in-game, and only in the lore of said game, does it really matter? They're still being presented as helpless characters with no other qualities of note. This is especially true for Peach - who spends each game waiting for Mario and her mushroom-headed servants to rescue her from captivity...usually to place her back in a big pink room full of cakes, jewels and other princess-y stereotypes. We see no applications of this power other what the player assumes from the title and the acclaim the protagonist gets from rescuing her.
Overall, I think a lot of the backlash Anita has received is due to how she's paced her argument. She keeps getting attacked for being biased and only presenting cases that suit her argument and not showing instances of when DiD is used fairly, examples of powerful damsels, or other examples of powerful female characters who just happen to get kidnapped, despite the fact that this EXACTLY what she said she's going to cover in the very next video.
Can Crusher
Banned
She took the money and ran, a bunch of people just got conned.
The youtube video she made is as low budget as it gets. Hell, anybody with 500 bucks could do better.
Prime crotch
Banned
Not a fan of her argument, she acuses Sarkeesian of trying to fit the evidence to her argument when in turn she does the same, while for some reason dismissing a critical view on the characters based on "canon"
I don't know about her, but I think your takeaway from the games is telling of the broader picture the tropes video is discussing.
How is this in any way stopping you from playing games?
So then if there's barely a plot, why do we have like twenty Zelda games and not one of them where you play as Zelda? Seeing as Link is just using a bunch of tools he finds scattered around the landscape, I see no reason why we can't have she-Link rescuing he-Zelda.
ZeroGravity
Member
Exceptionally well done video. It was an enjoyable watch, even for someone who's grown beyond exhausted with this whole debate.
Umm, really? When was the last time you saw a AAA title take a consistent money maker and then change the formula? They do it because it is safe, and the reason they dont make Zelda games is probably along the same lines. I mean, the only other argument I can see being made(which I don't believe is the reason, most games are like this, I think, it is all profit driven) is that they are unwilling to break gener roles, as in: The male should always risk his well being for the woman/political leader, while the woman shouldn't risk her life, because her intrinsic value(value for simply existing/baby making abilities) is worth more then her agency.
faceless007
Member
Sounds kind of like developers are being censored from making games differently than they would like to.
Says the angry mob after she's released 1 out of 18 videos on the subject.
Yes, a lot of people have criticized the video for "saying nothing new."
We agree that Zelda has a flimsy plot that's sort of irrelevant to the game in the grand scheme of things. Given that, you might wonder why Nintendo is so willing to tamper with the control mechanism of Zelda games (motion controls in SS, touch screen controls in Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks) but they're not willing to tamper with the gender of the protagonist.
Obviously, this is not JUST a sales issue.
You can claim that all you want, but it is clear that there is a fear in the industry of lead female protagonists not selling as well. You can sell this as something more then a money thing if you want but I think you are delusional, if you don't think, that if they thought a leading female brought more money, they would do it.
The reasoning behind why it is more profitable to sell a male character than a female one is what is being discussed here.
Same reason they haven't changed the gender of the protagonist in their other titles. Mario, Samus, and Link are and probably always will be the stars of their games.
This is precisely where the tropes analysis breaks down, both in your logic and that of Sarkeesian, which you only mirror here in shortened form.
Zelda, in Twilight Princess, is not captured out of weakness. In fact, she represents a rather powerful--if simple--depiction of a different kind of self-sacrifice which is more powerful than that of Link's battles. Watch the video in which we first see her:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kIKMPYye0I
Note that she carries a sword, ready to defend herself when the kingdom is attacked; yet facing certain defeat, and offered only the alternative of death for her people, she willingly and symbolically drops the sword and allows the takeover to occur. When we see her in the twilight realm standing at the window, she's certainly no weak damsel; quite the contrary, she expresses both a wisdom of the state of affairs and a sense of great responsibility for her people.
As the final battle with Ganon begins, she hands Link his weapon with a clear grasp of the situation and, after summoning the power of light arrows, directs him to keep her in range of Ganon so that she can weaken him. It's a shared battle in which she plays a fairly powerful role.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufwD5pEJZX4#t=0m58s
And in light of Sarkeesian's reductive phrasing that the damsel trope is structured around a play in which the woman becomes the ball, the prize, watch the ending of Twilight Princess and try to read the agency here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmxxIZapJXc#t=3m25s
If anything, Link is the pawn between these leaders of light and dark worlds, each of which speaks from a place of considerable wisdom, while the game's protagonist has mostly just stumbled through the hoops directed of him by Midna all along.
But the larger point is that the kinds of power we see in Zelda--of knowledge, wisdom, self-sacrifice of a responsible kind as a leader of others, not as a soldier--are dismissed out of hand if you merely look for a battling character as a model of empowerment. But that itself speaks to one's valuation of agency and gender, and there's a bigger problem here if we can only accept power in the masculine form.
She's probably not going to become the protagonist, but she could stand to become more of a character.
I think that looking to a character that *does* something in a videogame as a model of empowerment is not a terrible place to look. Zelda's role remains obfuscated by the (rather large) barrier between what's actually happening over the course of the game and what happens in lore.
The ending heavily implies, like the remainder of the game, that the actor that caused everything to be okay in the end was Link. For all of the infinite wisdom of Zelda and Midna, they were powerless to actually make any decisions or change the course of events in any way. In fact, the only decision that Zelda gets to make is the decision to lose.
EDIT: It's worth noting that I actually didn't watch much at all of her video as I'm very well aware of the issues facing women in videogames and didn't particularly need a long explanation of one of the most basic and recurring plot elements in the history of narrative.
Sweet billy.
The hyperbole.
You articulated better why I saw Peach and Zelda differently and couldn't agree with Kite on that point.
Relaxed Muscle
Member
This leaves you arguing that only the protagonist of a game can truly be empowered. But that runs into a further difficulty: if one were to play as Zelda in the way she has been represented--which, as I argued, and you neglected to engage, is a valid alternative model of empowerment--you wouldn't have an adventure game at all. Perhaps you'd like another genre in which a character like Zelda could be played, and I agree, but that leads us into critiquing the way video game genres themselves play out from gendered positions, which is a very valid conversation but only further questions the notion that progress could obtain by merely swapping out protagonist genders.
Have you played this game? Midna may need Link in order to attain her goals, but she's a far cry from "powerless to actually make any decisions or change the course of events." In fact, she directs pretty much everything that occurs, intervenes continuously in what is taking place, and even asserts a physical power at a number of crucial moments that Link could not have handled. The game is Midna's story and journey as much as it is Link's, perhaps even more--and I'm not the first to note this.
Thus you stick to the notion that only the sacrifice of a traditional hero, or a fighter, is valid. This is the same logic that traditionally has damaged women, by for instance dismissing the tremendous sacrifice of mothers as trivial or secondary while lauding as a hero the men who throw themselves blindly into the lastest armed combat. Again, a reductive take on empowerment that is potentially more damaging to women than their lack of representation as Link-like knights.
Nobody diminishes the sacrifice as mothers as trivial, what's in question is the idea that for a female character to be empowered it has to be through that motherly sacrifice.
Again, saying the plot justifies the cliche does not eliminate the criticism. These characters are written into their roles, they are not transcribing actual historical events. And when these differences consistently occur in the same convenient pattern, cross-genre and across history, it's worthy of consideration before continuing to perpetuate them.
faceless007
Member
Without getting into TP (because I haven't finished it): Not so, side characters can have agency and be empowered too by, you know, doing stuff. There's nothing that necessitates the player character be the only active character in a story.
i thought what he discussed was whether zelda specifically was disempowered or not.
Personally i find the discussion around DiD silly. The trope of saving someone as goal of your quest exists in hundreds of variations, from political leader, to saving the world - or - as with zelda - the girl. The quality of exectution varies but i fail to see the problem of the trope itself.
If you want to argue that there are need to be more female protagonists and variety in protagnist in general (and i agree with this) do so directly. Because ultimately that's what attacking the DiD trope boils down to. There's nothing sexist or disempowering or whatever you want to label it in saving something/someone dear to you.
Now you're shifting the argument from "Zelda's characterization is weak, mere damsel" to "but there aren't enough women represented as traditional heros in games." So I'd first like to know if you are in fact ceding the point that Zelda is not merely a weak, "damsel" of a character for her portrayal; and if so, then the argument shifts from "Zelda is a problem" to "let's see more games with female heros," a somewhat different conversation.
What you're attempting to argue is well understood: the game universe is contrived, so it doesn't inherently justify a bad characterization. Agreed. But I wasn't arguing that plot makes Zelda's characterization justified in Twilight Princess; I was making the much stronger point that her characterization is in fact a model of empowerment, however different from that of Link, but no lesser.
Yes, and Midna is in many ways the most active character in the game, making all the keys moves even as she directs Link to slog through the intervening steps.
I'm not the one making that point. How can I shift someone else's argument? Everyone's free to interpret the game in their own way, I've never disputed that.
The fact is, however, that Zelda's role has shifted from being a pointless damsel to (in one game) being a poor example of a plot-affecting character, who unfortunately still fulfills a lot of what makes a damsel so lazy.
We're not talking about a single game here, this is a series that's been released over a period of 25 years.
googleplex
Member
Princess Peach is, was, and always will be a helpless, useless garbage character.
Nintendo has done a better job by Zelda but is it stupid that She has never stared in a game with her own name on it. There's is no reason in the world Zelda couldn't be the Protagonists in a "Legend of Zelda" game.
Nintendo has done a better job by Zelda but is it stupid that She has never stared in a game with her own name on it. There's is no reason in the world Zelda couldn't be the Protagonists in a "Legend of Zelda" game.
I never argued that only the protagonist can be empowered, but Zelda doesn't even register as a secondary character for most of the game. Midna makes a much better role model than she does, but she still doesn't really do much (more on that later). What, exactly, is empowering about the TP model of Zelda? Who wants to be a character whose main power is futility? Here are the events you listed:
- Zelda is seen with a sword. This makes her about as empowering as a darknut.
- Zelda is seen surrendering, albeit wisely. Yes! You, too, can be a strong female that loses anyway and will ultimately depend on a (admittedly less intelligent) male character to save you!
- Zelda is seen firing a bow at Ganondorf while Link does the majority of the fighting. NOW she's a warrior just like Link! She's just not as good at it and she lacks the fortitude to actually be the focus of the fight. Too bad.
She could be an empowering intellect if she actually made a single correct decision over the course of her career as princess that didn't involve surrendering.
Let's say you did play as Zelda. Somewhere around the start of the game, you'd lose a fight. Then you'd... do what? Not sure. Zelda's character's role as a princess is pretty sparse. The next event seems to be being found by a wolf. Then there's a lot of sitting around because you're in hiding; there could probably be a whole stealth game here, but it's never discussed. Then you get captured. Then there's that bow segment. At this point the game ends, and it's implied that everything is going to be alright. But is it going to be alright? Zelda comes off as responsible but ultimately unable to actually influence the world; what if there's no more Link to do all of the dirty work?
I'll admit that I don't know too much about the plot (because the plot is very secondary to the actual game) but I've beaten the game. Twice, in fact.
Yeah, she directs everything, but she depends on Link entirely. Link only depends on the player; if this were a movie, Midna's role in the plot may be more empowering, but because it's a videogame, Midna's status as a non-actor is much more apparent. She does very little unless you order her to, and even when she does, it's just so that she can be used as a locomotive to advance Link to places where he can continue to solve more problems for the two dethroned princesses that the game revolves around.
Seriously, where have I said that the only model for empowerment is that of the violent hero? That I don't believe that TP Zelda is a good model for an empowering character does not mean that I believe that Link is the only model for empowerment. There is definitely room for intellectual heavyweights that express themselves as empowered through their cunning and intellect within videogames. A disenfranchised princess whose decisions result in her own demise that is ultimately only saved by her gambling on a male protagonist is not one of those characters.
Hell, I think Ganondorf is a much better example of a character empowered by their intellect; he's on top of the world until the very end of every Zelda game and he gets there mostly by playing Zelda and Hyrule like a fiddle (except in OoT, and I already said I like OoT Zelda).
Videogame plot often boils down to: "x" was kidnapped by ninjas are you a bad enough dude to save "x".
It's lazy, it's bad and it works well enough for most games. But the bad an lazy writing affects everything, not just the role of women. You are far from the only one wanting better writing in videogames.
That is how videogames work. The NPC's will always play second fidle (if that) to you. Because you actually want to beat the game yourself, not watch the NPC do it. The only way to let an NPC do things of significance is off screen.
Nope.
Just sick of someone who I find unintelligent, biased, and generally half assed in her work being pushed forward as some great groundbreaking person when random youtubers do a better job.
At some point due to insane commenters anyone who saw that Anita isn't very good at what she does somehow became a combination of a serial rapist and hitler. This is even if you agree with the premise that games have done women a disservice as a whole.
Right, which is why in the same post I explain why I believe that empowerment mostly seems to come from protagonists (or antagonists) in videogames.
EDIT: Better wording
You sound upset.
What you're attempting to argue is well understood. You're saying it's ok if she's disempowered in other ways, because you think she's empowered in some different ways. But that avoids the underlying argument, that the existence of one characterization does not justify the existence of, or invalidate criticism of, another--especially if attempting to do so conveniently ignores social and historical context.
Mildly annoyed to the point I watched a small youtube video and then took 45 sec to create a thread? Yes.
Upset? No.
oneils
Member
I must be missing something, because this video does not do this at all.
Riposte
Member
If it works, then it is not bad or lazy. I honestly do not see the point of creating a deeper story or set of characters for 2D Mario games, though I can see how certain tropes or the repetition can bother some people. There are more important things to be worked on anyway for the series, like visuals and music.
I remember watching this video a while ago. I found her point about us not having the right to deem certain games in series as less important than the main series completely ridiculous. The Mario spin off games aren't a good representation of any character's abilities because those games require balance between the characters. Each playable character needs to be competent in order for the game to work. You will have some characters that are better than others, but they are all at least decent. There would be no point in including Peach if she was as useless as she is in the main titles.
oneils
Member
Wow. Talk about missing the point. I am positive Sarkeesian would not think this.
I agree. The story in mario is literally 2 or three scenteces long. There's nothing to talk about here storywise.
You want to play as Maria instead of Mario? or princess Peach? that's a valid complaint. Trying to analize the plot of Mario games however, seems to put a lot of thought into nothing.
It's not that it's "less important," it's that the developers are actively disempowering these characters (vs the spinoffs / multiplayer titles) in order to fulfill these boring cliches in the mainline games. That's almost worse in many cases, because it acknowledges they don't have to be forced into these tropes but it happens nonetheless.
I'm pretty sure most of the discussion on Sarkeesian is perpetrated by her critics and not her supporters... like this thread. She's an easy target.
Futhermore, on NeoGAF, I don't know of a substantial group of people who think she's groundbreaking.
I'm not sure if you genuinely interpret the video in this manner or not, but all I see in your reduction of this scene is great contempt for characters who do anything but fight on their own. Because she relies on others to fulfill their roles along the way to her goals--ie., because she is not an isolated tower of agency--she is therefore comically weak. But in fact she is hardly a cowering damsel waiting for Link; she only expects (and directs) him to fulfill his role in the larger drama, a role which would likewise be incomplete and futile without her own actions. Not only could he have never reached her without Midna, he also could not defeat Ganon without her powers. You continue to suggest that any model of agency that incorporates interdependency is a problem, as are any roles that stray from the hero model. I content precisely the opposite.
Oh, exactly. The bounds of the genre itself make certain kinds of agency impossible for the protagonist's position. Which is why, if we want to do justice to a wider range of human experience and empowerment, we'd do better to create new genres than to merely keep insisting that hero-based games swap in female leads. The latter does very little on its own, and only would uphold the status quo wherein exclusively heroic agency counts, while human interdependency, caring, emotional intelligence, and all else are lesser.
You would have us split characters into itemized checkboxes of attributes that must be covered for agency, rather than understanding the character as a unique unit. She's not disempowered at all, she's a model of empowerment that doesn't fit yours.
And I will happily examine historical context with you, but we clearly reach different conclusions: if anything, I see the context as one in which the dominant video game genres privilege certain (traditional, heroic, violent, reductively masculine) types of agency, while excluding others; the problem then for women is not swapping them into males roles, it is also to reverse the dismissal of more feminine models of agency (embodied, interdependent, caring). And yes, there is a significant part of feminism that agrees: see the Ethics of Care, etc.
More to the point, Sarkeesian only furthers the out-of-hand denigration of any female character who is not traditional hero, and the video that is the subject of this thread does at least a better job of balancing that perspective.
I think it's accurate that they do not think about what they end up saying.
No, that's what *you're* doing by not acknowledging that something you consider a positive characterization does not justify the existence of, or invalidate criticism of, something others consider negative or lazy characterization.
This is fine as far as it goes, but it's also handwaving the real-world historical context of the trope itself. Your responses remind me of the Fink Manufacturing propaganda broadcast during Bioshock Infinite.
The real world historical context is only relevant when you look at videogames in agregate.
Nobody is going to disagree that women are underrepresented as protagonists in videogames.
Nobody is going to disagree that the DiD trope is used too often.
Attack a specific game and you won't get anywhere because the trope in itself isn't bad, you will get into arguments about the story of Mario (!) (a game with literally no story) and your point will be lost.
Unless of course, you want to argue that no one can be saved ever, especially not women, because they have been saved too often and everytime it happens the evil author wants to actively show how weak and defenseless all women are.
Not really. Is the historical context of racial stereotypes only relevant when you look at eg movies or television in aggregate? Once again, the claim that "it's justified by the story" does not actually address the criticism.