Lets talk about one last, debatably uncomfortable thing: the games portrayal of women. Forget the partial nudity and softcore sex youve maybe heard about, both well within the bounds of other art forms and beneath mention here. I mean the way the game often portrays women, from the perspective of adolescent or misogynistic men, as sexual objects. Is Rockstar satirizing the objectification of women, or just objectifying?
Im reminded of a quote by French novelist André Malraux: Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides. The criminal, murderous, casually cold-blooded protagonists of GTA V are anything but paragons of virtue, but then neither are fictional creations like Anton Chigurh or Tyler Durden or Tony Soprano characters that speak to the basest aspects of human experience, but aspects nonetheless, even as they repel us.
Im not claiming theres something as conceptually high-minded going on here, but satire comes in many guises, among them farce. Is Rockstars depiction of women merely exploitative or calculated burlesque? When Franklin sits in a strip club ogling half-naked dancers while chatting by phone with his estranged girlfriend, or Trevor has sex with someone elses girlfriend in a casual way that makes her out to be little more than a sex doll, is Rockstar going for mere titillation? Or is it making a subtler point, that we arent what we think we are?