Tropes vs Women in Video Games - Damsel in Distress - General

[QUOTE=mooman1080;39851089]I would attribute those very closely, it's trying to prevent comments is it not? Or shuffle them away some where out of view?[/QUOTE] She chose to prevent comments on her video. You can comment on videos if the author allows it, that's the way that platform works.

[QUOTE=thisispain;39850957]i asked that guy 2 simple questions; he failed to respond to either of them he said that the trope discussion was ineffective because she put things into too narrowly defined tropes. when i pointed out that she also mentioned how she explored variations and subversion of the tropes he said that she's "not keeping to the spirit of the trope". when i pointed out that in her view the trope was still being followed because zelda's character arc was still akin to a damsel in distress, he switched to just saying that focusing on the trope itself was bad... the second question i asked was in response to him saying she should have discussed more. i asked for clarification 3 TIMES and it was always the same "she just should discuss things more" with some condescending remarks inserted along. see he just repeats himself and mentions these mysterious "5 minute long videos".[/QUOTE] yes, defining things narrowly into tropes gives no consideration to the complexity of each situation and it is not the trope that defines if something is sexist, but the situation surrounding it. setting the trope so broad as "a woman is captured and needs a man to rescue her" leaves a lot of room for other things, and while it isn't a good start, it isn't necessarily objectification and sexism. Vasili's quote makes this point too. anita isn't saying that zelda's character arc was akin to a damsell in distress trope, she says it IS one. while she does acknowledge the circumstances of it, she makes no effort to differentiate these circumstances from anything else and categorises it with everything else. while she had a chance to show how the circumstances and things surrounding the trope can define it, she instead reduced it all back to the essential trope and proved little other than sexism can be disguised as not looking like sexism. found one video, from a [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxVtLGJFaVk]guy who made his own[/url] version -$150k, hard to find given the tidal wave anita caused. does a lot of discussion more in-depth, provides good examples and solutions in the same video and does it all in 7 minutes, sorry if that wasn't the five i promised. for what else to discuss, i did say numerous times but if you insist. the root causes of why the trope occurs could be examined in the history section and why it remains so popular. the nature of a trope and while it is a tool for recognising similarities, it is a starting point rather than a proof. analysing things that dissent from this and how the trope fits in with overall themes rather than tropes defining the themes. [QUOTE=thisispain;39850985]you havent explained shit i still dont understand yr basic criticism ive read some other posts who with a perfectly good attitude explained very sharply what their criticism was and i was like "cool" and i agreed with most of them youve spent like pages writing some weird shit and saying how fucking badass you were; but i still dont understand any of your reasoning and you are just repeating yourself and typing white noise like hoodedsniper or whatever[/QUOTE] the thing is as much as i want to make those arguments, it's not my top priority, encouraging this kind of debate and getting fun out of are. if you dont get it then idgaf, not my job to explain shit, read other people's far more articulate comments because i'm saying the same thing in a roundabout way. i gotta go to work now though so just think of me as the crazy one who shits up the thread.

[QUOTE=Vasili;39851007][img]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/11648828/1362801069069.png[/img] I found this and found it a interesting read as a rebuttal.[/QUOTE] i'm not trying to be a dick but can anyone who agrees with this overly verbose, rambling forum post actually summarize in their own words what their point is? because i have a feeling like people who agree with this massive post are just skimming through it, finding some big words that seem to contradict the idea of tropes in media, and agreeing because it supports their disposition against the tropes v women stuff. reading it myself it seems like they just set out to write "tropes dont exist because they aint that simple" in as long and complicated a way as possible to try and convince people who already agree with that idea that a coherent point is being put forward just because there are a lot of big words in the post this is an actual question if you disagree with me please summarize in your own words the point this poster is making because i seriously don't understand

[QUOTE=RoadOfGirl;39851117]She chose to prevent comments on her video. You can comment on videos if the author allows it, that's the way that platform works.[/QUOTE] And that's the problem, youtube seems like a public place, as long as the author isn't afraid of such negativity. But at the touch of the button, the author can dictate all discussion taking place directly on their work. Entirely removing or filtering as they see fit, ergo why it's seen as pathetic, it's just another form of censorship.

[QUOTE=Kopimi;39851211]this is an actual question if you disagree with me please summarize in your own words the point this poster is making because i seriously don't understand[/QUOTE] I don't think it was brushing tropes off as nonexistent but rather stating that not everything is a trope, some things at face value may seem as such but under the surface have a very specific and artistic reasoning behind them. I do agree that his use of large words blurs their point a lot and I think that leaves a lot of it up to interpretation and that is simply what I got from it... Which I agree with.

[QUOTE=mooman1080;39851230]And that's the problem, youtube seems like a public place, as long as the author isn't afraid of such negativity. But at the touch of the button, the author can dictate all discussion taking place directly on their work. Entirely removing or filtering as they see fit, ergo why it's seen as pathetic, it's just another form of censorship.[/QUOTE] well it may "seem like a public place" but it's not. No one is complaining that you can't post comments on .gov site articles or what have you. It doesn't matter. You can talk about it somewhere else. There are plenty of people that are going to view that video that really don't need to see what awful things people think about it.

[QUOTE=Winters;39851310]I don't think it was brushing tropes off as nonexistent but rather stating that not everything is a trope, some things at face value may seem as such but under the surface have a very specific and artistic reasoning behind them. I do agree that his use of large words blurs their point a lot and I think that leaves a lot of it up to interpretation and that is simply what I got from it... Which I agree with.[/QUOTE] but that point is meaningless without explaining WHAT that hidden artistic meaning is that drives 99% of women characters to be victims in games?

[QUOTE=mooman1080;39851230]And that's the problem, youtube seems like a public place, as long as the author isn't afraid of such negativity. But at the touch of the button, the author can dictate all discussion taking place directly on their work. Entirely removing or filtering as they see fit, ergo why it's seen as pathetic, it's just another form of censorship.[/QUOTE] Well the comments section in a video is intended to discus the actual video, and knowing the youtube community the discussion will go a lot like the one right here on facepunch. A shit load of kids calling her bad words and insulting her appearance rather than actually talking about the content. I'd probably consider it more of a cop out if she blocked comments on a site that encouraged intelligent discusion but she didn't... She blocked them on youtube. [editline]9th March 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=Kopimi;39851338]but that point is meaningless without explaining WHAT that hidden artistic meaning is that drives 99% of women characters to be victims in games?[/QUOTE] I agree, I'm not really qualified to debate anything about that though. I was just trying to answer your question as best I could.

[QUOTE=Kopimi;39851338]but that point is meaningless without explaining WHAT that hidden artistic meaning is that drives 99% of women characters to be victims in games?[/QUOTE] i don't think he was arguing against the idea of the idea of "damsel in distress" type tropes, but arguing that some particular games that employ them are doing it memetically, to create a familiar experience they can then flex into something more harmless or amusing. this would obviously make it harder to critically analyze these tropes because when games use them ironically, or simply as a vague excuse to create a fun experience, it isn't necessarily an example of misogyny; it's taking our culture and simply creating something amusing out of it. the example of the two boys punching each other illustrates that, because they are using the idea of masculine violence simply as an excuse to touch a friend in a culture where men aren't supposed to touch. that's at least the best summary i could make of the post. i don't really agree with it because it ignores that there is a society that creates these masculine and feminine stereotypes and perpetuates them. the whole point of examining the tropes is not necessarily saying that video games are misogynist, but that they employ misogynist techniques and stereotypes, which illustrate an underlying issue in our society.

This is a really good video, I think it's very fair, very coherent and easy to follow and it covers everything well. Looking forward to part 2, it seems that she is truly interested in presenting cases of inversion and stating everything fairly. One of the first things I thought of was Monkey Island so I'm glad she's gone with that. Other Nintendo specific examples though, Samus and Captain Syrup are the two big inversions in their games, as they're the protagonist and antagonist respectively of their games. There are also situations like Pokemon or Animal Crossing where one can play as either a girl or a boy and the content of the game is largely unchanged. Anyone that has a problem with this was probably just expecting it to be something horrible and went in with a really closed mind.

[QUOTE=Flyingman356;39851603]This is a really good video, I think it's very fair, very coherent and easy to follow and it covers everything well. Looking forward to part 2, it seems that she is truly interested in presenting cases of inversion and stating everything fairly. One of the first things I thought of was Monkey Island so I'm glad she's gone with that. Other Nintendo specific examples though, Samus and Captain Syrup are the two big inversions in their games, as they're the protagonist and antagonist respectively of their games. There are also situations like Pokemon or Animal Crossing where one can play as either a girl or a boy and the content of the game is largely unchanged. Anyone that has a problem with this was probably just expecting it to be something horrible and went in with a really closed mind.[/QUOTE] Why are you generalizing everyone that has a problem with it to be close minded?

[QUOTE=HoodedSniper;39851620]Why are you generalizing everyone that has a problem with it to be close minded?[/QUOTE] I can't see any other reason they would have a problem with it

[QUOTE=Kopimi;39851211]i'm not trying to be a dick but can anyone who agrees with this overly verbose, rambling forum post actually summarize in their own words what their point is? because i have a feeling like people who agree with this massive post are just skimming through it, finding some big words that seem to contradict the idea of tropes in media, and agreeing because it supports their disposition against the tropes v women stuff. reading it myself it seems like they just set out to write "tropes dont exist because they aint that simple" in as long and complicated a way as possible to try and convince people who already agree with that idea that a coherent point is being put forward just because there are a lot of big words in the post this is an actual question if you disagree with me please summarize in your own words the point this poster is making because i seriously don't understand[/QUOTE] The point of whats being said I believe (at least the first point) is using tropes as a explanation shouldn't be the end goal of a sociological analysis and her lazy method of TV trope arguing would have her rejected professionally. Tropes are never what they appear to be, often one sided, hastily looked over and put together from patterns that spring up in said medium to convey a point - to make something look very black and white in perspective (which is never the case, and is a dangerous and manipulative method of arguing/researching) and to discourage any attempt to expand on it. She also has a habit (or at least - her fans) of tying any form of expression/patterns in media at face value to power fetishes. This women is really nothing more than a student whose reciting what shes learned in college from her professors, in the sense that shes nothing more than a post-structuralists filling her videos with jargon-filled copy paste, rather than providing anything of her own proper research. At least that's what I understood, this is coming from a dyslexic, little obtuse for my tastes. I don't think I need to address the second and third point as that was a little easier to understand I believe.

It's not really anything particularly new or shocking, but it's still a pretty solid video and a good compilation of facts and history.

[QUOTE=Jackald;39851988]A very interesting rebuttle posted on /v/ that i'm going to repost here: sorry if it's been posted earlier, i don't want to go through all that shitposting. [/QUOTE] no it's basically focusing on how it harms men, it harms both of course it harms women more because it puts them in a passive role

[QUOTE=Jackald;39852008]But still, it raises a good point; The "Damsel in Distress" trope certainly doesn't make women "worthless" like Anita says, it does the exact opposite, which is the point. [/QUOTE] Yeah it makes them worth more if you regard them as objects to obtain [editline]9th March 2013[/editline] (that's objectification btw)

[QUOTE=Jackald;39851988]A very interesting point posted on /v/ that i'm going to repost here: sorry if it's been posted earlier, i don't want to go through all that shitposting. [img]https://dl.dropbox.com/u/10001051/1362783696174.jpg[/img][/QUOTE] i dont see how men murdering men for women somehow makes the damsel in distress a good thing for both genders in fact his point illustrates the opposite; the damsel in distress is bad for both men and women and i also like how he wants to talk about not perverting the truth for the sake of an agenda, while talking about poets and playwrights poets and playwrights are not historical records excuse me. in reality, historically men have not sacrificed anything to save women. chivalry was an absolute myth as women in war were often taken advantage of and used as a prize for warfare. this dude needs to stop romanticizing the past tia [editline]9th March 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=Jackald;39852042]You do realise the difference between "Having worth as an object" and "worthless" right? I'm not saying that objectification is right, but it's certainly incorrect to say that objectification makes women worthless.[/QUOTE] i live in the present where removing self-agency is a negative thing. anything that removes self-agency from someone i consider it to be dehumanising

[QUOTE=Devodiere;39850569]this is good timing, i was away for a few hours and was afraid we'd lost that track. such a shame you're self-righteous prick who believes everyone not agreeing you is blind and needs to get learned, but whatever, this is for my benefit more than your stubborn ass. yep, i don't believe that white men shape everything according to their views, because why should they care? even if you wrongly assume that the gatekeepers and investors of most industries from entertainment to technology were white men, would their number one priority be enforcing their moral code or making cash? why should they put all their money into forcing women to be slutty when they could just make cash? it seems the only real time they might appeal to this is when white males are their target audience, like in video games. the influence they exert is not designed to enforce their views and often achieves the exact opposite as these are white old men, the kind that like fox news, but they don't care. no-one really cares about changing it except social activists, artists and that kind, which are certainly more diverse than our oligarchs. if you look at most artistic work, there's a small amount of unintentional misogyny in big investments where most everything else loves harping on about social justice, because it sells. those in power don't care about this crap and they certainly aren't trying to make you like them.[/QUOTE] It is not self righteous so much as taking all of this from an academic perspective, not based on principles by people who's lives you can only imagine. Enforcement of moral codes and creation and enforcement of ideals are done by multiple people who are not explicitly trying to do so. The rules were not created in a day, but were created from a society that is dominated by few over many years. It's a gradual trend. So when you say: "the influence they exert is not designed to enforce their views" 1. How do you know? and 2. It does, whether they mean it to or not. "why should they put all their money into forcing women to be slutty when they could just make cash?" They make cash off of women's sexuality, precisely by forcing them to focus of sex or be unsuccessful in the entertainment industry. Do you honestly think that the ideal woman is not used in every advertising campaign in order to extract massive profit from women with terrible self esteem? Did you know the average woman's self esteem peaks at 9 years of age? And that women perform 66% of the world’s work, but receive only 11% of the world’s income, and own only 1% of the world’s land (this is a worldwide statistic, but I bet the USA does not do much better than this)? Even if you look at only US statistics, women are far behind men in almost everything, and it is not due to any kind of inferiority. I know it can be hard to see the bigger picture sometimes, but, despite the fact we have gotten better, and despite the fact that we are getting better every day, we still live in a patriarchal society that implicitly perpetuates inequality in various ways. I don't want to tire myself listing all the ways considering how many statistics there are to prove it. In the area of video games, it is the same thing as all media: games about strong women are seen as exceptions that are not as likely to be played by guys, unless they have few clothes on. It is the same thing as the concept of a film with all white males being "normal", but a film about a woman being a "chick flick" or a movie with more black people being a "black movie". Also, Fox news is a distraction that people use to deflect criticism. Even if someone is not as bad as an old guy from fox news when making a game with the damsel trope, or making a movie with no minorities in it, etc, they should be called out for it.

well by that virtue everything has pros and cons i mean the holocaust was pretty bad and lots of jews died, but we got some good movies out of it so it wasnt entirely negative

[QUOTE=Jackald;39852118](see her complete refusal to accept the existence of sex-positive feminism as a counterpoint to her very strong sex-negative feminist viewpoint)[/QUOTE] citation needed

Saving people from things is good. Portraying men as saving women from things all the time is bad because it reinforces the notion that women are too weak to save themselves, and that they need men in their lives to protect them, with the price of submission to the savior. That is as simple as it gets. Don't need to reference Some de Beauvoir this time.

[QUOTE=Flyingman356;39851873]It's not really anything particularly new or shocking, but it's still a pretty solid video and a good compilation of facts and history.[/QUOTE] Based on this mistaken notion, said student can often resort to simple 'pattern finding' with no need to prove or analyze beyond the bare fact that such patterns exist; this is held to be enough, as the rest follows automatically. I doubt she'll go expand past the trope thing, that involves doing things. Being a smug, contemptuous symbol is just easier. The argument itself is fine; the main point of Hachi's post (and largely something I agree with) is this person has used popular well known information as evidence to create her inductive argument, which just comes across as; "no shit Sherlock". However her argument isn't to create a gender neutral humanity like a lot of people think, it's that the damsel plots are a fucking annoying stereotype in videogames and is a shitty way to paint a majority of female characters. But, Women with power exist. And when I use the word power I am not referring to brute power. I am referring to women with motives, ambition, and a career and general characteristics - this is something I feel shes largely ignored to suit herself (even going back to say Zelda is a useless character to a degree, unless she dresses up). She looks at everything again at face value, believing any female with out a sword is somehow suppressed, weak and demoralized in a mans world. This common characteristics we've seen over the years of women portrayal isn't because of a male market, its because of shit writers (though I suppose you can blame both). The main problem is we lack games with woman as active roles but were abundant in Damsel roles in the previous years. A lot of older games used damsels in distress motive due to lack of memory and processing power - games needed simpler and more clearly defined motives/plots. In old films the bad guys generally wore black or otherwise dark sinister looking clothing due to film being valuable, they didn't have the capability to fully characterize everyone. Games used easily definable motivations and roles from popular culture such as books, old myths, old movies to say as much as possible within a very lines of text. As hardware progressed the more defined characters became, the more diverse their motivations, and this trope started steadily to grow out of favor. We started having characters like Zelda and Link who both had to work together to overcome an enemy, whom neither could defeat on their own so they both had to help each other and become more participant in the story. However, games were still considered a thing that mostly males played, so the development and marketing was still targeted towards a male audience, this has grown into disfavor as well. The industry realized the potential in female consumers and a lot of characters and games nowadays are starting to target towards females. I would still like to know her position on what should be done about Damsel plots, hopefully she will clarify in the next video, which I hope is soon because $150k and reciting what you've learned in college social science is a bit of a cliché.

[QUOTE=Jackald;39852128]That is one hell of a straw man argument you've got there, thisispain[/QUOTE] thats not a strawman. [quote]Anyway, the point is that the "damsel in distress" has not been entirely negative[/quote] i went to the extreme to show that your point is silly because you can't say anything has been *entirely* negative.

[QUOTE=Jackald;39852118] Also, by the way, I appreciate that this isn't the main thrust of your point, but i'd just like to make an observation that Sarkeesian isn't a very good academic based on the things she's published and the level of research she has exhibited in the past. She's very very good at taking one side of an argument and talking about it in detail (see her complete refusal to accept the existence of sex-positive feminism as a counterpoint to her very strong sex-negative feminist viewpoint)[/QUOTE] I've tried not to concentrate purely on her work when arguing in this thread, and I am not too familiar with it besides her life after the Kickstarter, leading up to now. It is posible that she is a sensationalist more than an academic. Sensationalists tend to speak more to activism and talking to average people, while more academic people tend to publish for other academics. She may "sensationalize", meaning render things more digestible, like a youtube series rather than a paper, but it does not erode from her central point, which has been repeated ad nauseam and to which I agree with wholeheartedly.

[QUOTE=Jackald;39852164]Alright, then i'm saying that the positive effects are largely ignored, when they may have actually been quite significant, and it's taboo to suggest that a patriarchal society has, at any point, ever been at all beneficial towards the development of the human race. But okay, i'll concede since i'd personally rather move on with this discussion.[/QUOTE] It is taboo to suggest that because it is as taboo as saying that the Holocaust was beneficial towards benefiting the human race by encouraging the development of the post war world, which saw a significant reduction in wars between western powers. It's not the best thing to say to the victims, to say the least. [editline]9th March 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=Jackald;39852173]Sorry if this sounds facetious (i'm not trying to be), but what central point would that be?[/QUOTE] [url]http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1252259&p=39852134&viewfull=1#post39852134[/url]

[QUOTE=Jackald;39852149]Instig8ive journalism explains it quite well here at 3:04 here: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpFk5F-S_hI[/media][/QUOTE] no he makes a claim based on an assumption you said SHE refuses "to accept the existence of sex-positive feminism as a counterpoint to her very strong sex-negative feminist viewpoint" show me something SHE made that A. states that she is a sex-negative feminist (if you know that strawmen exist you should know why its important), and B. that she doesnt accept the existence of sex-positive feminism stop with this investig8ive journalism crap. do your own research because this dudes research is fucking awful. its not journalism or "investig8ive", its a dude making assumptions over stills of her face with nothing to back up his statements if she indeed has these viewpoints, it should be very easy to find her expressing those viewpoints, otherwise forget it

[QUOTE=Jackald;39852164]Alright, then i'm saying that the positive effects are largely ignored, when they may have actually been quite significant, and it's taboo to suggest that a patriarchal society has, at any point, ever been at all beneficial towards the development of the human race.[/QUOTE] yeah and im saying thats all fine and dandy, but youd have to make a very interesting moral argument that probably has to reject utilitarianism completely in order to argue that in a whole it has been positive, especially for women because i believe in gay shit like self-agency and gender equality i would argue no

[QUOTE=Jackald;39852206]Well if she knows about the existence of sex-positive feminism, she's certainly refused to ever mention it.[/QUOTE] sex-positive feminism isnt really what that dude said it was in that video. you can totally believe that gender roles and expectations are harmful to everyone and be completely sex-positive. gloria steinem, kathleen hannah, and peaches to name three [QUOTE=Jackald;39852206]Every video i've seen her in where she expresses an opinion on feminism has been squarely in the sex-negative feminist camp.[/QUOTE] ok show me one that lands her in the sex-negative feminist camp [editline]9th March 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=Jackald;39852222]Fine, i was wrong, i'm a colossal sexist tool, can we please move on with the discussion already.[/QUOTE] now you are strawmanning me, i never called you a colossal sexist tool

I can't even tell what would make one think of her as sex-negative

[QUOTE=thisispain;39852193]no he makes a claim based on an assumption you said SHE refuses "to accept the existence of sex-positive feminism as a counterpoint to her very strong sex-negative feminist viewpoint" show me something SHE made that A. states that she is a sex-negative feminist (if you know that strawmen exist you should know why its important), and B. that she doesnt accept the existence of sex-positive feminism stop with this investig8ive journalism crap. do your own research because this dudes research is fucking awful. its not journalism or "investig8ive", its a dude making assumptions over stills of her face with nothing to back up his statements if she indeed has these viewpoints, it should be very easy to find her expressing those viewpoints, otherwise forget it[/QUOTE] he's called "instig8tive journalism" but ok whatever u say