faceless007
Member
I think you're unfairly conflating different kinds of criticism in the second category. I think there's a difference between pejorative statements meant to insult the creator or consumer (which I will agree we could all use less of) and criticism examining works through a broader cultural or historical context that can include normative critique ("This work contributes to a racist history of depicting blacks as lazy welfare moochers." "This work perpetuates old stereotypes about women being shrill and hysterical for no good reason." "This work presents sexual assault as a humorous act that's no big deal.") I will readily admit that some people on the anti-sexist-depictions side tend to adopt a tone that's not very endearing or welcoming to the opposition which simply leads to more discord, and for that reason I try to keep my own tone rather level, but I think it's unfair to lump the two together inherently and thereby characterize all normative critique as inherently hostile.
I'm confused. This seems to be directed at me, even though I made it explicitly clear in my last post that I have no interest in defending Ellis's tweet, and that I'm responding in aggregate not just to the defenders in this thread but to those making the equivalent argument in the many other threads about gender depictions we've ever had that did not originate from such hostility. This thread is now at 2500+ posts, all stemming from one single tweet (which Ellis has not followed up on) and many other critics of the design decision have posted their own not-that-insulting arguments as to why they have a problem with the design (as an example, I would direct you to Devolution's earlier post), so I'd like to think that by this point the discussion has some potential to move on to discuss the subject in a more generalized and more mature manner. I'd hate to believe that the start of a thread inexorably predetermines its tenor and any attempt to improve the quality of discussion would be fruitless.
In any case, I can't agree that Ellis's tweet has led this thread down a uniquely hostile path because, as I argued and which I think should be indisputable to anyone who has followed these threads closely, exactly the same reply argument about "artistic vision" is inevitably trotted out each and every time someone deigns to question the sexualization of a female character no matter what kind of rhetoric they choose to do it with. You can start a damn betting pool to the first appearance of "artistic vision" in any such thread. So while I certainly think the tweet was not the ideal way to start the conversation, I think it's rather irrelevant to the question of whether "artistic vision" is a meaningful rebuttal, and it feels more like you're just using the tweet as a convenient excuse and as a rhetorical bludgeon with which to cast all critics into the same mental space and thereby dismiss them all in the same broad brush.
So this is the crux, I suppose. I don't have much to go on because you're simply asserting a priori that any of the aspects being criticized are entirely harmless, and you don't seem to willing to entertain the suggestion that creators' works can have a larger amalgamated effect on culture and societal attitudes at large. Naturally, I and most of us who take issue with such prominently sexualized depictions of women disagree. Culture is a powerful force and while any one single work is unlikely to have any pronounced effect, widespread cultural output that predominantly adopts the same basic character tropes, the same stereotypical gender and racial roles, and the same objectifying visual motifs, has some effect on the way groups internalize their own role and the way they see themselves and others. Granted, research on this question is difficult to accurately carry out due to the immense number of complex environmental variables at play, but Cyan had a post linking to some scientific studies on exactly that question not too long ago that are quite relevant.
In short, though, I do not accept the idea that all art, or all creative works that purport to be art, is inherently worthy of immunity from criticism, no matter how much you might bristle as the suggestion that artists have some small degree of social responsibility. Stereotyping and excluding entire demographics from meaningful representation in media are signs of a medium that needs to be pushed forward. While I would not go so far as to demand a particular work be censored, I am entirely in favor of asking creators to re-examine their own default assumptions about how they conceptualize characters, and I don't see this a significant affront to creativity -- especially when, as in the current mainstream video game industry, the field is so populated with generic soulless stereotypical pandering titles all aping one another in the pursuit of the fickle male 18-35 demographic that I find most pretensions to having artistic integrity rather hollow anyway. Positioning a female character wearing a bikini top for no good reason as any sort of daring and unconventional act of artistic bravery -- in this industry, especially -- strikes me as more than a little ridiculous.
