TaroYamada
Member
Do you specialize in reductionist/oversimplified responses?
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Tropes versus Women in Video Games
- Thread starter Kodiak
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Do you specialize in reductionist/oversimplified responses?
poetry
TaroYamada
Member
Neoriceisgood
Member
I like the "What's in this drink?" part of that song.
NovemberMike
Member
It doesn't really translate that well but it's an old saying. It's basically "I'm going to do something I shouldn't". It doesn't actually mean that anything's in the drink.
NovemberMike
Member
It actually doesn't mean that the drink is strong. It's a turn of phrase that ironically suggests that you are acting like a drunk when the drink is non-alcoholic. It doesn't really make sense of the drink is actually alcoholic.
EDIT: The point of the song is that he's giving her excuses she can tell other people.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Baby It's Cold Outside has been, and will always be, a song about a dude trying to talk a girl into fucking him while he gets her progressively more and more drunk.
That's it.
Whether you consider that charming, gross, funny, relatable, or predatory is entirely up to you.
That's it.
Whether you consider that charming, gross, funny, relatable, or predatory is entirely up to you.
Riposte
Member
Well, yes, this much I can agree with immediately. It is almost pointless to say. All messages have a medium.
Putting aside I think it flows the other way around (the justice system is largely tilted against blacks and latinos thanks to far older racist ideas and that is reflected in disproportionate media of not only drugs, but other crimes like theft and violence), this isn't doing anything I'm accusing Anita of. It is significant by the virtue of working a macro level and then looking at how the larger "problem" affects and uses media (I assume you mean anything from news to movies and music). Now the moment you break away from that and begin targeting specific movies (for example) you begin to lose SOCIAL significance, especially with material that just isn't that relevant to the world at large (especially the case with more obscure videogames). Then it becomes more of a matter of taste, informed by your values. (Personally, I think escapism has more pressing matters than "message". I can love things with messages I really dislike or even just find utterly banal. Frankly, most people feel this way even if they don't care to admit it. We love violence, despite it being illegal, and we have no problem coming back to material which shows blah blah in a negative light (which is everything, if you ask the right person), because it feels good. Stepping away from it as a failure of social justice, it is also a failure of looking at and appreciating a craft of illusion, that's more or less where I originally entered the conversation in the first place)
You give a nice clean example here, but it is rarely that simple. Many of the negative tropes Anita brings up more or less comes down to videogames featuring male characters more prominently than female ones. Very indirectly that might say "men are better than women", but the "problem" here is that these are male power fantasies. Is that actually a problem or just the way things are due to much larger matters? Are you really working from a solid base by going through a list of cliches so and so finds distasteful?
The Wizard
Member
Whether or not you think Baby It's Cold Outside is creepy doesn't really matter when she fails to justify every other song belonging on that list.
NovemberMike
Member
Yeah, it's similar to how Lifetime movies tend to have a female protagonist. The media is created with an audience in mind and for mainstream games that's generally 18-30 year old men.
Zoe
Member
I stopped bothering to watch when that annotation popped up during Mariah Carey's song saying that she wasn't critiquing the song itself--just the kind of songs it represents. Was that always there?
This is... I can't even.
Who gave you this impression, or what made you think this? I hate to be all "I'm a linguist" but while I was totally willing to accept your idomatic interpretation of the phrase as one I had just not encountered, I simply cannot find any evidence whatsoever of that usage on the googles. It also strikes me that you're trying to inject an awful lot of complexity into a relatively simple line I never thought twice about before coming into this thread.
If you are not a native English speaker I rescind my laughter and apologize.
NovemberMike
Member
This is... I can't even.
Who gave you this impression, or what made you think this? I hate to be all "I'm a linguist" but while I was totally willing to accept your idomatic interpretation of the phrase as one I had just not encountered, but I simply cannot find any evidence whatsoever of that usage on the googles. It also strikes me that you're trying to inject an awful lot of complexity into a relatively simple line I never thought twice about before coming into this thread.
If you are not a native English speaker I rescind my laughter and apologize.
Talking to older Americans? I know a lady in her 90s now that uses this expression.
fabricated backlash
Member
Media is a part of culture. Influence goes both ways and thus Media itself is not a primary source of influence but an expression of pre established systems of meaning.
Criticizing media for a portrayal of stereotypes is akin to treating symptoms rather than causes.
About your media stereotypes. If true, everyone watching Nazi propaganda would afterwards believe what they saw. I should vote for Strache because his Posters and Comic strips deriding Jews, Muslims and blaming everything on the socialists are everywhere. By taking out the consuming individual as an acting participant in the consumption of media you are enforcing a fatalistic idea about media that I absolutely don't share.
NovemberMike
Member
This is... I can't even.
Who gave you this impression, or what made you think this? I hate to be all "I'm a linguist" but while I was totally willing to accept your idomatic interpretation of the phrase as one I had just not encountered, I simply cannot find any evidence whatsoever of that usage on the googles. It also strikes me that you're trying to inject an awful lot of complexity into a relatively simple line I never thought twice about before coming into this thread.
If you are not a native English speaker I rescind my laughter and apologize.
Just asked, apparently it's a line from a movie. Not sure which one.
I just want to drive by post that this woman is a moron, and I had to turn that video off during the first song ("Oh my god it's totally sexist for a woman to want to be with the man she loves for Christmas!") only because I knew that the longer I watched it, the more likely I would be to post something in the comment section that she would go out of her way to misconstrue as sexist. (For example: Anything.)
I understand you now, and even agree to degree that to concentrate too much on a single story, game, song, whatever, would be misguided.
I think you make a good point, but I'm having trouble understanding your logic in one regard. You agree that media and culture both influence one another. With that in mind, why is it then illogical to criticize media? It's not akin to treating symptoms instead of causes, because in this case the symptom and the cause are the same. If police minority motorists primarily because of their belief that minorities simply use drugs more, and those views are in large part shaped by the media they consume, then where is the harm in criticizing the media? Why not go after that which helps shape the culture? Or to put it another way, if changing media isn't the effective way of changing cultural views or perceptions, then what is?
idlethreats
Member
It would indeed be pretty moronic if that was the argument she was making in the video.
fabricated backlash
Member
Media doesn't create meaning, it reproduces it. So to criticize media to act as a form of delivery for meaning is useless to my mind. I think it is imperative to keep in mind that everyone who is consuming media is doing so as an active individual. You don't challenge a meaning that you find "harmfull" or "problematic" by criticizing it's reproduction via media, or oral or performative action. It is inherent in human culture to reproduce meaning, regardless of it's moral value asigned by parts of society.
Media as a propaganda tool would only work if you divorce the consuming subject from any autonomy or free will. This kind of definition of media is only valid if you asume that consumption of such media is done by mindless drones rather than thinking individuals.
This simplistic view is anti-democratic, it is opressive and counter intuitive.
Too often media is criticized without taking into account that it isn't the source of the message that it conveys but it's delivery. And a delivery is inherently neutral and unbiased. It's a tool inherent to culture. And then you still have to take the reaction to the respective message/meaning into account.
Take video games for example. Derided as a hobby that makes you fat, misogynistic and prohibits you from ever getting pussy/dick/whatever floats your boat. Did gamers actually believe this representation of their hobby by the media?
Did criticizing the reports work in order to change public perception?
Hint, it didn't.
What did work was introducing the debate to a democratic public discourse without finger pointing and wagging the finger from the interchangeable spot on the moral high ground.
I wish I could discuss this matter in german as my english is nowhere near sophisticated enough to express my thoughts on this adequately. (I've been spending half of this post on LEO^^)
Delusibeta
Banned
If your method is critiquing is along these lines, then not really.
As I said earlier, I suspect she actually wants a backlash.
TaroYamada
Member
That is the argument she is effectively making, because the song doesn't represent what she claims it does. She claims that the song portrays a stereotype that all women need/want is a man, which is untrue. The song only indicates that the woman within it wants to be with the man she is in love with during Christmas. I highly doubt that this is an uncommon desire. From my experience most couples, particularly young ones, seem to look forward to having their first Christmas together.
The song is in no shape or form sexist, unless you consider wanting to spend time alone with a significant other on a holiday sexist. What is sexist, in the video, is Anita maintaining that if a man sings the same song it "borders on stalker" territory, as though female stalkers don't exist.
I assume she even says those things on purpose. Knowing that there will be people calling her out and talking about it and possibly even getting upset about it. Which means more clicks on her videos.
I mean for "All I want For Christmas Is You", you just need to use google for 5 seconds for a tiny bit of research and then figure out that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_I_Want_for_Christmas_Is_You_(Mariah_Carey_song)
Case closed.
She interprets things into the song which just aren't true at all. It's her own creepy thoughts. The song would immediately make sense for someone in a long distance relationship. "Hey, I don't care about anything, I just want my girlfriend/boyfriend here". Makes sense and is also really romantic. But then - romantic - the new creepy. Maybe she was never in love, I don't know. Maybe she is frightened to fall in love, maybe she is scared of doing something that she could later interpret as sexistic. Or maybe she just does those things knowing that she will get clicks for it.
I don't want to know what she would make out of a "I love you" postcard. Being in love, it's sexistic.
Makes Bayonetta video -> extremely harsh, gets facts about game plot wrong -> massive backlash, tons of attention, takes video down -> creates kickstarter to criticize video games
okay
Well, this have caught my attention.
Thing is, I would like to reply to this comment because the author is obvious a very, very politically correct person that it is also... nice. As in, with little to no syndrome of moral superiority. And that's a great starting point
see, the thing why people becomes so defensive about this issue is mainly because whenever the media has critisized videogames, it has always done it by stating the very opposite premise: that liking videogames with problematic elements on them made you a worse human: violent, socially stunted, psicopathic, you name it. I must admit that when I saw the whole "female tropes on videogames" tread my first instinctive reaction was "great, so now in addition to be a serial murder because of playing videogames I will be a sexist, too. Just great". Glad to know that this is not the case.See, that's a gripe that I have with the whole politically correct vision of the Universe: there is not such a thing as a "Universally problematic" content. It is entirely culture-dependant, and it is also a very personal thing. I can ask, discuss and even apologize for my word usage to the person that is in the very front of me, but it is impossible for me to pretend to never cause any kind of offense to any hipotethical human on Earth.
Welcome to the human race. Yes, racism and sexism are necessary in order to potray mankind on all its glory and horror. Hell, there are several antropologic studies that prooves that fear / disgust towards "people not phisically resembling yourself" is pretty wired into our reptilian brain. And systemic prejudice is something human as fuck, and not only limited to race and sex either.
But thing is, people never went to war for shitting or killed each other because of their personal higiene (albeit my flat mates may prove that affirmation wrong someday), whereas race and geneder have shaped history and societies all over the world. The author is either very ignorant of history, or incredibly naive. Also, then again the desire for the self censoreship of third parties rears its ugly head "dying to keep it in the script"? So we should really remove any kind of potrayal of sexism and racism because it is gross. Really?
This is the thing that I will never, ever, ever understand. Do you guys know how, well, sociology works? "Subconcious influence", seriously? Damned be Freud and all the trope of freudian charlatans that plage American psycology. First: read more cognitivist and systemic psycology literature, seriously. The sooner the shaman-like cult of the subconscious is abbandoned, the better. And second, the great question is whetever art is a reflection of society, or if is society shaped by the art. Even if both may be true to some extent, after studying marketing and advertising I must confess one dirty little secret: the power of mass media is grossly overstated. Advertising impacts hundreds of million of people every day, yet only a sliver of them do change their conduct because of it (buy their product). When talking about issues such as racism or sexism, you are talking about deeply ingrained behaviour. A book or an ad won't make you a better or worse person, in the same way that advertising fails miserably when trying to combat real issues such as drug addiction. Media affects our behaviour in a very superficial manner. Even when a work of art touches one of our deep fibers, that is because one must be willing in the first place to the possibility of being influenced by it: we tend to consume media that reinforces the beliefs that we already have in place. Personal experience, and most importantly, the will to change is what make individuals and masses's vision of social problems to change as well.
But there are fantasy worlds like these already. The Name of the Wind, for starters. I will not complain, I like to have both types of worlds
If my talking partner have issues with a certain work of fiction, by all means I would be willing to discuss it. Debate is always a good thing. But what I am not going to buy is the notion that feelings of offense take precedent over everything. My own feelings, included. And I would also like to be albe to defend the position that some feelings are, well, illusory. There's a modern cult of feelings that really do hampen rational discussion and distort reality. People often see offense, cheating, and menaces where there is... nothing. Taking other people's feelings into account when discussing a work of art that you like is one thing. Claiming that windminds are giants, and expecting your talking partner to agree with you or else you are being insensible is a pretty terrible thing. True friends tells you that you are wrong (and can admit it too).
I don't have a problem with that. If I appreaciate the person in question I may insist, for I would think that they are loosing a valuable experience, but that's just that. It is a pretty humane thing, me thinks. But of course anyone is withing his / her rights to not play a videogame for whichever reason, as long as I can enjoy it myself if I want to.
But son, trying to convince other person of your own vision is the entire point of debates.
The feeling of offense is not the definitive argument that ends every single discussion. Feelings are not necessarily real, desirable or worth of respect. The whole "certain discussions should never take place because one position on that issue is offensive and hurtful" is bogus.
So, sorry, but I don't buy it. Political correction, even when done with good intentions and no rancour behind such as this case, it always lead to the same conclussion: unchallenged views, non existant debates, self censoreship, spirals of silence. I don't want any of these in my videogames or its press. I want my media to be challenging, provocative, uncomfortable, disturbing. Gross and disgusting even, if necessary. And if it become too much to bear, I can always turn it off, in the same vein that I noone force me to browse trought Storfmfront instead of Neogaf. Such is the greatness of unrestained freedom of expression. I would like to keep it in that way, thank you.
Riposte
Member
Would get banned for complaining about the sexist ads on torrent sites.
idlethreats
Member
I don't think you've understood the argument that she's making. In her words:
Essentially, she's saying that this song in of itself is not that bad, but that it's message contributes to a much larger body of mass media that regurgitates a similar theme: namely that all a woman needs to be fulfilled is the love of a man. She's not saying that the song is attempting to represent the needs of all women. Of course, in isolation the Mariah Carey song is sweet and harmless and romantic. Probably most of the examples that contribute to the stereotype are fun and romantic on their own, but Anita's asking us to question why this particular message is so prevalent in our media regarding women. On the micro scale there is nothing wrong with it and I don't doubt that many individuals feel the same as Mariah with respect to their lovers on holidays - it is reality. I know that all I want most of the time is just to be with my long distance partner, so I certainly relate to Mariah's song! But women are dynamic individuals with a multitude of needs and wants and find satisfaction in many facets of life outside of heterosexual love - and Anita is saying that our media and entertainment do not reflect this part of reality well, and that "All I Want for Christmas" is yet another drop in the ocean that adds ever so slightly to the problem by adding to the imbalance of how women are portrayed in the media.
Now, whether or not you agree with that argument is another issue. Personally, I don't much care for this video of hers (I actually got in a pretty heated disagreement with my partner last Xmas over it, IIRC) and I think "All I Want for Christmas" is a light hearted, sweet, holiday song regardless of who is singing it. I can also understand why she might interpret a man singing this song as creepy and stalkerish (because, generally speaking men are more likely to stalk and abuse and assault women that they are romantically involved with or interested in than the other way around, *I think,* which could make the messaging somewhat more sinister when coming from a man than when coming from a woman), but I don't think it's as black and white as she suggests and I don't agree with her on that point either. What I am saying is that characterizing Anita's argument as "It's sexist to want to be with your lover above all else" is inaccurate and not the point that she is trying to make, as I understand her video and subsequent commentary on the issue.
Ok then why did she choose that song to criticize and then backpedal? Because she wanted to complain about something that wasn't even there, and when someone called it out she excused herself. It doesn't do her any good if you have to put in that much effort to make her argument for her.
Grizz, if you have problems understanding that a little bit of something can be okay, but a massive, overwhelming amount of that same thing can be bad, you have way bigger problems than a youtube video series about sexism in video games.
idlethreats
Member
Yeah, I agree. I think it was a poor choice to include that song in her video, and as I said, I don't care for that video at all really. I think she's more or less right about the "Baby It's Cold Outside" song but her other choices just made me roll my eyes and I felt like she was grasping at straws. As I've said before, I don't think her work is flawless or above reproach and I think this video is a good example of that. I just wish people wouldn't leap to hyperbole and mischaracterize what she's actually said in order to turn her into a straw feminist that's easy to tear down, and that's what it seems like a lot of her critics tend to do.
No dude, I understand very well that it can be a problem if all of media is reinforcing to society that a woman needs a man to be complete. Of course it's bullshit, it's not true, and it IS repeated too often as an idea. If she wants to make an argument and convince me of that she needs to choose an appropriate example for her criticism instead of expecting people to correct her.
It's pretty condescending of you to assume that I didn't understand the issue at hand but I believe I've made it clear throughout this thread that I agree on what the issues are but don't agree with how Anita handles them. You can go ahead and keep blindly defending what you think is right though, I'm not going to take your bait and respond to the personal attack.
I wouldn't say so. That is a part of it, but to me the main point of debate is to gain perspective. It's more important to understand why a person has a particular opinion.
a few statistics would be more useful than bad examples to make that point.
Proposing Mario is sexist because he saves the princess is dumb, but demonstrating that out of a sample of 100, 25 games use that trope (arbitrary number), is a point worth making...
I just think that saying a man is a stalker if he sings a particular love song, but women doing the same are not, does not contribute to an intelligent discussion about the topic (and is pretty sexist imo). Showing the problems in gaming by picking games apart individually will not work, because most mainstream games aren't actually sexist.[/
NovemberMike
Member
I think the issue is that there's an intelligent point to be made but she's not making it. It seems like she has that problem a lot.
All very interesting points. But I disagree with the assertion that media doesn't create meaning, in the sense that media can create opinions and views where none existed before, and to strengthen and reinforce views that were already present. Using your gaming example. Negative perceptions of gaming as a hobby really began to take root in the early 90's with the rise of Doom and Mortal Kombat. Though senate hearings were held on the topic of video game violence, it wasn't the hearings themselves that created a public outcry against video game violence, but local news stories about the rise of violence in gaming and it being portrayed and problematic that gave rise to concern. This media driven concern reached a head after Columbine, where games, along with certain forms of music, were painted by the media as root causes of the massacre.
Sure, those who had an intimate level of knowledge about games couldn't be persuaded by these kind of stories, but for the millions who had no prior knowledge or interaction with the medium, they believed what they were told, and a bevy a negative stereotypes were associated gamers and fans of certain music, stereotypes that the media then reinforced.
Weltall Zero
Member
Ah, I see your point now. The woman on a fridge trope, however, is a subset, not the same set, of all occasions where a character dies and impacts others; namely, it happens early on the story, and acts as a motivator for a large portion of it. I understand where you're coming when you say that by this definition, any early deaths in a story can be hard to distinguish from "women on fridges", as they are bound to shape the story no matter what. I think the key is intention on the author's part; did this character die SO THAT there can be a story? In other words, would there be a story at all if this character hadn't died?
Note that Tropes (by themselves) Are Not Bad, and some of the best stories of all time are put into motion thanks to the death of a character. It only becomes a problem when this becomes far too dominant, and in the context of this discussion, when all women in a story fall into this category, or others that are similarly undeveloped. So to speak, what this trope says is that the character is barely a character but rather a device; devices are good because they move the plot forward, but if all female characters in your story are but devices, then that is indeed a problem.
fabricated backlash
Member
Again, in these cases, media conveyed pre existing meanings. In this case it was an effort to put blame for social issues on gaming. This message isn't new. It's a cultural staple that is as old as humanity itself. The new generation and their dangerous ideals/hobbies, believes is destroying moral values and security. This kind of story has been told and conserved from ancient greece, to the romans, up to the Renaissance and modern times.
Media didn't create this irrational fear. It might activate it in people who are susceptible to such stimulus, but even then it's not a given that they would believe it outright. If it isn't videogames, it's minorities, comics, porn, rock music, gays, atheists, religious zealots, you take a pick. But again, it doesn't create new meaning but merely colour it.
A good example are misunderstandings of cultural code in foreign media. Media is allways a cultural practice and as such a tool. a tool is only working if it adheres to pre existing norms and ideas, otherwise it won't be understood or ignored. The meaning itself is irrelevant if it is perceived outside of it's intended or originating set of cultural codes.
To criticize media for doing it's job as a vehicle of transporting meaning is dishonest in my view. If you disagree with the meaning that it is presenting you aren't actually solving anything. Just trying to get something out of the media isn't going to make the fundamental underlying problem go away. Sure you can fire and publicly crucify Charlie Sheen for his antisemitic remarks toward his former boss, effectively eliminating his message from the media, but that doesn't make antisemitism go away.
Actively policing speech, media and art to get rid of everything that is deemed problematic is just dishonest as it doesn't solve the problem but hide the symptoms. And by hiding them behind a curtain of politically correct neutered speech they are allowed to be antagonized.
If you believe in the core principles of a democratic society, you also have to accept that everything is ok to be conveyed by media even hatespeech or blatant misinformation. It is acceptable to confront a democratic public with the opportunity to decide how to handle it. If it is offensive, nonsensical or deemed dishonest through democratic discourse it will be resolved sooner or later.
Oh, right, of course, she's instead showing that she doesn't know the difference between "you" and "any man." My mistake. She's an even bigger moron than I was giving her credit for.
EDIT: Wow, I didn't even realize this was the woman from the kickstarter. Now I'm kind of disgusted that this dumbass reached her goal. There are so, so, SO many feminists that aren't drooling idiots that are so much more deserving of support and respect.
fabricated backlash, it seems like you aren't aware of the distinction between form and content. You're talking solely about media characteristics (or media ontology if I may say so), not the actual content conveyed through the medium. What people in this thread is talking about is the content (female characters) and how they are represented.
TheBaronOfNA
Banned
Form and content are actually tighly relationed. Specially when a point of the discussion is whatever is needed role models in the media.
(I personally believe that we need role models in media until certain extent but I just wanted to say that separating form and content is not exactly a good dismissive)
(I personally believe that we need role models in media until certain extent but I just wanted to say that separating form and content is not exactly a good dismissive)
I completely agree. Which is also why I mentioned it in relation to fabricated backlash's weird position.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhgPh5zLZ5o
She's busy working very hard to portray herself as a victim.
As usual.
This is her current "progress" as seen in the video.
That collage must have taken months of research to put together.
She's busy working very hard to portray herself as a victim.
As usual.
This is her current "progress" as seen in the video.
That collage must have taken months of research to put together.
I'm a 27 year old male and I get death threats, threats of violence, and threats of rape in online gaming. How is that a "woman's issue"?
Is the only difference that I don't take it seriously and can casually brush it off for what it is, while some women choose to get offended by it instead?
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