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Trevor does yes.
Yeah but its made very clear from the beginning that he's a scumbag and a psychopath.
Trevor does yes.
Yet the men supposedly get some character depth while the women don't.¹
Yet you're not supposed to be appalled by men touching strippers or using prostitutes.
The problem isn't about a sexist story, but sexist storytelling.
¹Actually, does the game feature male NPCs with some flesh, or are they all just as hollow?
yep, the main characters and most of the characters in GTA period are assholes.
One thing to keep in mind though is this: IT IS POSSIBLE TO CRITICIZE SEXISM/TRANSPHOBIA/HOMOPHOBIA/ANY ELEMENT OF TOXIC CULTURE IN MEDIA YOU ENJOY.
Very good post, although I'd disagree with the assessment that R* are completely evenhanded in taking pot shots at everyone. Even if they were, it wouldn't make the mysoginistic undertones any more necessary or desirable for the world they tried to create.Personally i disagree with the notion that GTA is one-sided in its pot shots (except maybe for its transphobia) as they make fun of pretty much anything in they wake, from the macho military mentality, to the empowering feminist buzzwords and mantras, to spiritualism, etcetera.
The problem is that at this point it's just lazy writing, they shoot in all direction afraid of leaving someone out, but they don't seem to apply any sort of thought into the satire, the result is a messy, crass, collection of cheap jokes at the expense of every target in sight, with usually the lowest possible hanging fruit approach.
If you match this, with the inequalities that exist in the real world, the final picture won't look as even and it would have.
To use a metaphor, if you apply the same amount of water to glasses that aren't as evenly full, only some of them will overflow.
The way to remedy this would be for them to take a step back and see what GTA has become.
It's not the cartoon GTA3 was anymore, and with deeper characters and a deeper world, they need to start implementing some deeper writing and deeper satire, put some thought into it.
Having listened to some of Lazlow's interviews though, i don't think that'll be happening, i have little faith in that guy to bring anything deeper than what we currently get.
Look at something like RDR, and (although not the perfect progressive manifesto) you can see what they can potentially do, without the shackles of the GTA franchise, and its expectations of "outrageous comedy that takes no prisoners", but that really, it's become just a tired dude yelling dick jokes in the street.
One thing to keep in mind though is this: IT IS POSSIBLE TO CRITICIZE SEXISM/TRANSPHOBIA/HOMOPHOBIA/ANY ELEMENT OF TOXIC CULTURE IN MEDIA YOU ENJOY.
When we became less and less okay with the society we have?When did the world become so serious. Jokes are jokes.
That was in reply to as what the player was supposed to feel remorse about, and these two instances obviously not being part of that. Not that I'd think any part of the game is supposed to trigger remorse, but oh well.It puzzles me that men touching strippers or using prostitutes is something that you are hung up on as sexist storytelling. Of all of the things in this game this is probably one of the most realistic aspects. Women selling their bodies to men and men using them happens all over the world and has happened for as long as we have documented history, so including it in popular media is not sexist.
It's really not.
Cultural critique of individual works is an inherently problematic concept. It has very little value, is almost always built on a very rickety ideological basis that is taken at face value or misappropriated, and always, always feeds as ammunition for censorship in a society that has no clear protection for speech.
Cultural critiques of the wider state of media looking at statistical trends have some value. But of individual works? No.
That's a lot of IMHO stuff with, especially with the 'inherently problematic'. There's tons of cultural critique done on individual works. I once read a book, for example, of essays compiling political stuff from the first Alien film. Don't really see the magical problematic nature of it.
I don't know why people - most of them even genuinely like the game - keep saying that. I loved every main character in V, I loved Lamar, Ron and Wade... hell, I loved Michael's family! I wouldn't love them if I'd think of them as "assholes".
The protagonists all are written to stand for societal issues, but they overcome being a satirical archetype in a sense that gives you the feeling to know them to a level of depth that goes beyond two dimensional "satire of x". Rockstar doees that by giving the characters redeeming and relatable qualities that don't contradict who these characters are.
By being able to accomodate multiple viewpoints and understanding the logic behind each of them. I seriously hate it that most people call the other side "idiots". Because the only idiots are people with severe mental handicaps. Everybody else has shrewd logic. Back to topiucJust out of curiosity, how can a human perspective be unbiased? Viewpoints are subjective by nature.
No more so than the statement in the OP that it isn't problematic.
I didn't say there wasn't tons of cultural critique done on individual works. I just said they didn't have value and are inherently destructive. Lots of things that don't have value and are destructive happen a lot.
What was the main effect of your book on stuff from Alien? Have the cultural critiques made anything any better? Isn't it a lot more likely that sentences will be lifted out of context to justify awful behaviour than any positive outcome?
Do you think that making the playable characters terrible misogynistic pricks could maybe be a business strategy to appeal to that sort of market? If so, I think that's too pessimistic. If anything, I really do think it's meant to mock that kind of audience.I agree that R* understands what the majority of AAA gaming fans want, and everything in GTAV is only there only to please the target demo. It is a commercial product designed solely for maximum profit. But it is not some deep de-construction of America any more than Furious 7.
The only part of humanity it illuminates is AAA gaming, and yeah, looking for humanity and hope there is, well, hopeless.
I'm not sure why you would say this. Do you really believe the works of great artists like Hitchcock, Shakespeare and Tolkien should not be examined and critiqued in detail?
I didn't say there wasn't tons of cultural critique done on individual works. I just said they didn't have value and are inherently destructive. Lots of things that don't have value and are destructive happen a lot.
What was the main effect of your book on stuff from Alien? Have the cultural critiques made anything any better? Isn't it a lot more likely that sentences will be lifted out of context to justify awful behaviour than any positive outcome?
Examined? Sure.
I was careful to limit my condemnation to cultural critique, because that requires a study of how the work interacts with the observer that is sufficiently complex and subject to chaotic factors that it is in effect beyond human ability to study effectively, hence the ludicrousness of concepts such as gaze.
It's really not.
Cultural critique of individual works is an inherently problematic concept. It has very little value, is almost always built on a very rickety ideological basis that is taken at face value or misappropriated, and always, always feeds as ammunition for censorship in a society that has no clear protection for speech.
Cultural critiques of the wider state of media looking at statistical trends have some value. But of individual works? No.
sexism is a problem in video games in general.
but in GTA it should be expected, as should stuff like racism and homophobia, it's a series about bad people doing bad things for bad reasons in a bad world.
This is exactly it. It's about low life criminals. It would be really odd and out of place if they weren't completely sexist.
I'm not sure why you would say this. Do you really believe the works of great artists like Hitchcock, Shakespeare and Tolkien should not be examined and critiqued in detail?
What about Michael having a complete lack of respect as the patriarch of his family and his need to see a therapist? He's in the middle of a midlife crisis. Thats not a direct shot to his manhood?
Franklin is easy: he is a young man more than capable of taking control of his life, but he still lives with his aunt, is unemployed and riddled with angst. Thats a direct shot at his man-hood (his aunt mentions occasionally, Lamar frequently, as well as his ex-girlfriend, Trevor at one point as well) and maybe to the male individual playing GTAV as well.
I
Maybe I'm way off, but I feel like both genders get served if you look for it hard enough.
You're not reading what I'm writing. Look up the definition of discrimination. And sexism is just another term for gender discrimination. A piece of media that portraits all genders, races, ages and people equally bad, can't be called out for being sexist. It can be called out for being terrible in general, but it's not sexist because according to the very definition of sexism, which is about the differences.
It was on par with the comment I was replying too. GTA is full of problematic content. Violence towards men and women is one of them.
I've played GTA with female friends loads of times and they visit stripclubs on GTA online and after shoot the place up.
The problem here is that you grant Michael and Franklin their 'manhood' without questioning it, but then where is the 'womanhood' which should be granted to any female characters?
The whole idea of 'manhood' being a thing which men should have by default, which GTA 'takes shots at', is another structurally sexist concept. I'm not saying you're a sexist - it's a structural thing, ie something which everyone doesn't even think twice about.
But it's not equally bad. It's worse for women. There's so much evidence in this thread of that. Even just a thumbnail analysis of one aspect of character in fiction:
Some male characters have lots of power. Some have none.
Some male characters are always lackeys, under a boss. Some have true agency.
No female characters have any 'power'.
No female characters have any agency. Arguably Michael's wife does, but she's still slave to sexual relationships with other people and comes 'crawling back' when they don't work out.
People are doing the traditional structurally sexist thing here and focusing on the men. "But the men are flawed, too!" Forget that. Look only at the female characters, and look at them in a near-vacuum (only including nebulous/structural connections to male charaters).
Only two women have a modicum of agency/power: the FIB woman, but even she's in love with her boss who isn't interested in her and is insulted by Franklin about this.
And Franklin's ex-girlfriend. She is actually a really excellent character, come to think of it. Probably the only good female character in the game. She doesn't put up with his shit, makes her own choices, and never compromises her principles. She never gets back with him a very logical and well though-out development. Kudos to Rockstar for getting one bloody thing right.
It's a well-known fact that women partake in sexist (misogynist) culture just as much as men. That's because these issues are structural people struggle to see or understand them because they are subtle and obscure patterns throughout society. These are abstract ideas - for example men and women will say 'slut' because it's "what you say". They won't understand that the word was only invented to perpetuate a negative narrative around women.
Often the game's goal seems to be to make the player uncomfortably complicit with these events. They don't expect the player to love or agree with torture, the Deborah aftermath, or any number of these things. They're using an interactivity to demonstrate character flaws and depth that may not be as resonant in other mediums.
It's definitely not a statement of "look how great your life is when you do these things." Depicting something is not prescription or endorsement. I don't find the content "problematic" one bit. It's a term that gets flung around a lot in these critiques. I'm not convinced what they're calling problems are problems.
GTA is supposed to be Gross & Offensive, South Park Minus intelligence & social commentary
GTA was never supposed to be a progressive game that made us into better people
GTA is horrible people doing horrible things in a horrible world, the protagonists are evil men and we are not supposed to admire any of them.
When the game is racist or transphobic, you are are supposed to be appalled by it such that you don't stand for it in real life
The men are cowards or murders while all the women are shrill harpy's
I didn't enjoy GTAV. There are lazy racial stereotypes. Right from the off, you have to shoot a security guy in the face and then slaughter a bunch of police. No alternative approach permitted.
Watchdogs was better.
It puzzles me that men touching strippers or using prostitutes is something that you are hung up on as sexist storytelling. Of all of the things in this game this is probably one of the most realistic aspects. Women selling their bodies to men and men using them happens all over the world and has happened for as long as we have documented history, so including it in popular media is not sexist.
Honestly, why should we care about what feminists think of a popular game? That's the definition of a shot in the dark. It achieves nothing but generate hate against that particular group of people since they represent a minority of women (and gamers). If you're disgusted about sex and violence in GTA you're part of the problem. It's a videogame. It's not meant to be an intelligent game teaching you how life should be. This shit is too much
It's telling that the feminist criticism of GTA5 focused on story elements and set dressing, while the defense largely boils down to what players can and can't do to faceless NPCs.
Here's a quick example of how GTA gets the same idea across as another piece of (often satirical) American crime media, Breaking Bad.
Hank Schrader is the masculine FBI guy. He makes beer in his garage. Then you see the rest of the house: purple. Everything is purple. The sheets. The curtains. The furniture. It's obvious why: Marie Schrader. Hank has a lot of power, he is the definition of masculinity, but his home is covered in his wife's identity. Its a bit absurdist but also fun, and implies a lot about Marie's character in a slightly cartoonish way.
In GTA5, at least two separate wives have massive portraits of themselves in the house. They just go ahead and play the same bit twice. Now, neither is subtle; something like the way Breaking Bad did it would be a lot funnier. In this context, it comes off as though every wife in GTA is shrill and narciccistic, while the majority of the male supporting cast get to be real characters with unique quirks. Yeah, everybody is being made fun of, but you'd have to be blind not to notice how little the game cares to treat women, even absurd, awful women, with the same care.
So no, I don't want GTA to remove the ability to murder faceless female NPCs, I want it to be smarter and funnier and actually consider that women have three dimensional lives just like the male protagonists do.
Holy shit... *facepalm*Honestly, why should we care about what feminists think of a popular game? That's the definition of a shot in the dark. It achieves nothing but generate hate against that particular group of people since they represent a minority of women (and gamers). If you're disgusted about sex and violence in GTA you're part of the problem. It's a videogame. It's not meant to be an intelligent game teaching you how life should be. This shit is too much
Honestly, why should we care about what feminists think of a popular game? That's the definition of a shot in the dark. It achieves nothing but generate hate against that particular group of people since they represent a minority of women (and gamers). If you're disgusted about sex and violence in GTA you're part of the problem. It's a videogame. It's not meant to be an intelligent game teaching you how life should be. This shit is too much
No clue where you're coming from or going with this.Why did Rockstar San Diego even bother making Annie in Red Dead Revolver a fully formed character with agency? Shouldn't she just be herding cattle and cooking? Isn't that more historically accurate? Why did they make her a playable character? This combat stuff with shooting men who're burning her farm was too manly for her. She'll have to raise kids someday and all this violence won't do her body any good.
Why did Rockstar San Diego even bother making Annie in Red Dead Revolver a fully formed character with agency? Shouldn't she just be herding cattle and cooking? Isn't that more historically accurate? Why did they make her a playable character? This combat stuff with shooting men who're burning her farm was too manly for her. She'll have to raise kids someday and all this violence won't do her body any good.
/s
No more so than the statement in the OP that it isn't problematic.
I didn't say there wasn't tons of cultural critique done on individual works. I just said they didn't have value and are inherently destructive. Lots of things that don't have value and are destructive happen a lot.
What was the main effect of your book on stuff from Alien? Have the cultural critiques made anything any better? Isn't it a lot more likely that sentences will be lifted out of context to justify awful behaviour than any positive outcome?
He has anger ‘issues’, and is prone to violent outbursts and is currently in therapy. He loves his family, but doesn’t understand his children, and has trouble relating to his wife.
It is theoretically possible to justify this as the actions of a woman who has lost her place in the world (as she had to leave everything behind when they went into witness protection) and is slowly begining to resent the man she left everything behind for. However the overwhelming feeling I get from it is, HAHAHA, women are such whores…
She seems willing when she is told she can get on a tv show if she has sex with the presenter. She may be seen as Rockstar’s critique on/satire of the ‘new generation’ who are obssessed with fame for fame’s sake. Or, when viewed along with her mother…HAHAHA yeah Rockstar…women….whores….we get it.
Good points. I agree completely. Almost everyone in GTAV is a shitty person. I guess they could add some more idiotic, greedy murderer women and more whore guys but they would still all be doing bad things.It's not well thought out I think.
The problem that always arises in such 'subjective' reviews / analysis is that they more often than not fall into the same logical fallacy. The writer depicts the male characters individually but generalizes the women characters and deduces a general statement from each of them for their entire gender.
Example:
When speaking about Trevor:
When speaking about Amanda:
Tracey:
Other examples are that the "manchild gamer" is apparently a 'neutral' term in her views and perfectly acceptable, but Mary-Ann Quinn is a "tired cliche of career woman being emotionally stunted and too masculine.", showing a clear negative connotation when depicting her. Same for Denise Clinton, who is "generally treated as a figure of derision." (but not Trevor, Jimmy or any of the male side characters etc?). Debra is "a ball breaking career woman who is also a whore. This is starting to sound familiar "
She doesn't look objectively at the characters to further her point - willingly or unwillingly.
I don't mean that you should point out the 'problems male characters have' as well, since the topic is about WOMEN in GTA V, but IF you bring them into the point of view (often as [positive] counterexample), you need to treat them equally. If you follow the reasoning behind her "Rockstar depicts women as whores" statement then you could say that "Rockstar depicts men would be idiotic, greedy murderer." Yes Trevor is a lunatic and Amanda might be a whore, but that doesn't mean MEN are lunatics and WOMEN are whores. Point is: It's dumb to generalize.
That happens in almost all but a few texts and videos I have read and watched for this or similar topics. It's always the same and it's a bad practice and invalids the text single-handedly, if the writer uses this type of reasoning as a main point for his/hers thesis or statement.
I'm failing to see how feminist critique fails in this regard. Talking about a game's treatment of women does not negate or diminish how it treats men. It is merely another viewpoint to consider, or pursue if you're interested. Feel free to disagree.
Can you also cat call them or use them for sex?
Well, there's actually several lines of dialogue where Trevor admits or at least seems to admit he's bisexual. There's also the matter of him spooning with Floyd. There's also lots of other, perhaps contrary things you could interpret about him, point being, his sexuality's kind of up for debate. Based on the evidence and not implications though, I'd be willing to bet bisexual.None of the characters you play as are gay.
You can however yell abuse at NPCs regardless of their gender.