I don't know if I buy that, either, but maybe what I'm about to say is a connection to your point, Aella. The gruesome death of women is plentiful horror films, where it might be missing in other genres, so maybe that's why this particular bit feels a bit "off" to me. Certainly, when I watch stuff like the clip provided by Red7227, it comes across as horror instead of some different genre, like the action or adventure game that it's sold as. I'll own up to that as a personal feeling; I watch this and I feel horrified. Maybe that makes me a horrible sexist who thinks all women are weak, but I doubt it.
I think this game still works just fine as an illustration of the disparity in its treatment of men vs. its treatment of women. As you say, men get themselves killed all the time in all sorts of stories, and we just shrug it off, yet when a woman is killed, it's generally in order to elicit some sort of thrill. This game doesn't get out of that, not as far as I can see. When I see Lara Croft struggling in vain under the weight of a guy as he pins her down, stabs her in the chest, and then grabs her face and coos at her as she dies, I'm not thinking to myself, "now THAT'S empowerment!" Victimization is not a form of empowerment. The myriad creative deaths of Ms. Croft is not a step forward in gender equality.
And I think that the way that people react to it is just as important as the material itself. The way that people react goes in toward the type of person that this sort of thing is intended to appeal to, and the type of appeal it's supposed to generate. When Isaac Clarke gets ripped apart by space mutants in Dead Space, where are the masturbatory comments then? Dismissing the fact that people -- a lot of them -- are relating violence against a female character with sex is telling. There's either a cue in the material that eliciting the response, or there's something in the culture that normalizes such a response. Either way, that the game or the audience doesn't really seem even be aware of it, let alone willing to really address it in a meaningful way, means to me the that there's a disconnect going on. That we seem so willing to just put up with that sort of behavior, to me, is not okay, because it's not treating the death of women in media as the same sort of device as the death of men.
At any rate, I'm up too late, and I feel like I'm just rambling and spinning my wheels with this particular thread of discourse at the moment, so I'll just switch it up a bit wit two things.
First, the subject of Sevrin's original post, Anita Sarkeesian, has actually posted the
first video of her project. So, I guess she's not a big fake faker after all. Notice that it's hit over a million views in two weeks, and also notice all of the response videos there on the sidebar menu.
Second, I'll call attention to the
#1ReasonWhy movement on Twitter that's been happening over the last few months, which began as a call for women in the gaming industry to voice their experiences. (Trying to search the hashtags on Twitter can be a bit awful, so I'll just link to this
HuffPo article that makes for a good jumping-off point.)
This is an entertainment industry that makes more money than the movies, by the way. I think it's time we stop excusing rampant sexism in something so big and with so much cultural impact as "boys will be boys" behavior, or, worse yet, treating it as if it doesn't exist at all.
Okay, off to bed with me.
I didn't actually read the article or most of the OP.... Shame on me. Lol.
