Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Quit Pretending There Isn't A Videogame Rape Culture
http://critdamage.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/quit-pretending-there-isnt-videogame.html
(Trigger Warning: This post is going to talk about rape culture and violence against women, and will probably involve a few expletives because I'm pretty fucking angry. I want to note, too, that I am talking as a privileged (and ignorant) cis, straight, white, male. It is also important to note that, yes, men are often rape victims, too, but this post is explicitly talking about sexualised depictions of violence against women.)
(snip)
I wasn't going to comment on the Hitman: Absolution trailer. Well, I was, but then I wasn't. For one, Mark Serrels at Kotaku Australia has already noted everything that is vile and disgusting and pathetic about it (to which Michelle Starr added some more excellent thoughts, as did Sarah Ditum which the above quote is from, as will many others before I post this in the morning, I'm sure). Then I got furious about it on Twitter, and Leigh Alexander rightfully noted that, even more than the videogame medium's typically poor treatment of women, this trailer is so contrived, so vile, so pathetic, that it should not even be worth commenting on. It's like (and this is my analogy, not Leigh's) getting angry at Westboro Baptist Church for being homophobic. Sure, they are. But they are so pathetic they deserve little more than pity. The same goes for Square Enix (and IO Interactive if the trailer accurately represents any part of the game) with this trailer: it is so pathetic, so vile, to not even be worthy of criticism. I pity the developers who have to put this filth on their CV. Leigh rightfully notes it is being 'controversial' and '(im)mature' purely to make us angry and get publicity.
(snip)
This really upset me. Not just infuriated me, but upset me. I lost sleep over this last night. I'm embarrassed and ashamed and disgusted to have any part in a videogame culture that produces work like this. Although there are a number of intelligent people coming out against it and games that don't buy into the rape culture do indeed exist, it is almost moot to the fact that our culture has gotten to a point where this trailer exists. That upsets me because we all let it get to this. If the mainstream media were to pick this up as a reason games are terrible or should be regulated or any other reason, I won't be coming forward to disagree with them.
(snip)
There is a line of thinking, an unconscious line of thinking, that is embedded in the way our society teaches men and women alike to think that it is a woman's fault for getting raped. That if they didn't want to get raped, they shouldn't have dressed how they did; they shouldn't have gone out at night; they shouldn't have done whatever it was that a man could have freely done without anyone batting an eyelid. You hear about it all the time in Those Crazy Other Countries where a woman gets stoned to death for being raped or a child is forced to marry her rapist. Make no mistake that the same mentality is alive and thriving in the mainstream of Western societies, too.
...
(Trigger Warning: This post is going to talk about rape culture and violence against women, and will probably involve a few expletives because I'm pretty fucking angry. I want to note, too, that I am talking as a privileged (and ignorant) cis, straight, white, male. It is also important to note that, yes, men are often rape victims, too, but this post is explicitly talking about sexualised depictions of violence against women.)
(snip)
I wasn't going to comment on the Hitman: Absolution trailer. Well, I was, but then I wasn't. For one, Mark Serrels at Kotaku Australia has already noted everything that is vile and disgusting and pathetic about it (to which Michelle Starr added some more excellent thoughts, as did Sarah Ditum which the above quote is from, as will many others before I post this in the morning, I'm sure). Then I got furious about it on Twitter, and Leigh Alexander rightfully noted that, even more than the videogame medium's typically poor treatment of women, this trailer is so contrived, so vile, so pathetic, that it should not even be worth commenting on. It's like (and this is my analogy, not Leigh's) getting angry at Westboro Baptist Church for being homophobic. Sure, they are. But they are so pathetic they deserve little more than pity. The same goes for Square Enix (and IO Interactive if the trailer accurately represents any part of the game) with this trailer: it is so pathetic, so vile, to not even be worthy of criticism. I pity the developers who have to put this filth on their CV. Leigh rightfully notes it is being 'controversial' and '(im)mature' purely to make us angry and get publicity.
(snip)
This really upset me. Not just infuriated me, but upset me. I lost sleep over this last night. I'm embarrassed and ashamed and disgusted to have any part in a videogame culture that produces work like this. Although there are a number of intelligent people coming out against it and games that don't buy into the rape culture do indeed exist, it is almost moot to the fact that our culture has gotten to a point where this trailer exists. That upsets me because we all let it get to this. If the mainstream media were to pick this up as a reason games are terrible or should be regulated or any other reason, I won't be coming forward to disagree with them.
(snip)
There is a line of thinking, an unconscious line of thinking, that is embedded in the way our society teaches men and women alike to think that it is a woman's fault for getting raped. That if they didn't want to get raped, they shouldn't have dressed how they did; they shouldn't have gone out at night; they shouldn't have done whatever it was that a man could have freely done without anyone batting an eyelid. You hear about it all the time in Those Crazy Other Countries where a woman gets stoned to death for being raped or a child is forced to marry her rapist. Make no mistake that the same mentality is alive and thriving in the mainstream of Western societies, too.
...
It was so hard to pick just four paragraphs.
Anyone curious about the aspect of this as it's expressed by the gamers as opposed to coming from the games themselves might check out a blog called Fat Ugly or Slutty.
24 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
t's all very well animated and the fight sequences are technically pretty impressive. But the fact that it is a chap who is murdering these naughty, naughty nuns (with details that border on the pornographic – lingering arse and crotch shots, sprays of blood over cleavage … you get the idea) makes the viewing a little uncomfortable. Especially in company. Would Agent 47 have looked as powerful fighting gun-toting nuns that hadn't removed their habits and had worn sensible pumps instead of platform heels? No, he'd look ridiculous. Somehow, the fact that the killer nuns dress like streetwalkers makes them fair game for killing.
Some people (myself included) don't like the end result. Others do, but they tend to be the sort of people that can't use advanced concepts such as capital letters. Either way, we can pretty much all agree that the imagery of a hero killing fetishised women is a questionable thing. But here's the kicker: the trailer actually has very little to do with the content of the game. It's a lie. Not just in terms of graphics – I think we're all agreed that using CGI to create a prettier impression of your game is no more of a fib than the airbrush artwork that graced early 90s box art. But the gameplay is markedly different from what is presented to the viewers. Having experienced a hands-on session with Hitman: Absolution at a pre-E3 event around a month ago, I'm pleased to say that it's retained all the slow, stealthy, hiding-in-a-cupboard-until-you-kill-someone gameplay of the previous titles.
Previous Hitman games are basically a puzzle, to which the solution is invariably death. They're ingenious, inventive and rewarding games, which actively encourage you to kill as few people as possible – aside from your target, obviously. Absolution is the same. In an early mission, Agent 47 is tasked with killing a nasty man who hangs out in a pagoda in a busy square. Want to shoot building supplies so they land on his head? Sure! Want to dress up as his drug-dealer friend to infiltrate past his bodyguards? You got it! Want to knock out the chef at his favourite food stall, steal the chef's clothes and then render his lunch deadly with the blowfish poison? That is legitimately a thing you can do.
Conversely, if you want to rock up to the bodyguards and take out all of them in a row (like in that trailer above) suffering no harm yourself, then you can't do that. There's a bunch of them, and they tend to shoot you even if you take advantage of Agent 47's limited Red Dead Redemption-style ability to line up shots in slow motion. And if they don't, Swat teams show up pretty soon after and finish the job. As a result, the trailer is barely representative of what remains a stealth game at heart.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/01/hitman-absolution-trailer-nuns
And that article links to so many other good articles.
Melissa McEwan's article on Rape Culture is especially great (Rape Culture 101)
I just went to Fat Ugly or Slutty... and I am... speechless.
I wish I had more time but I have bookmarked this for future reference so I can follow the link trails further.
Somehow life was a lot less depressing when I thought I was already sufficiently empowered (so the hell with everyone else) and I was just too cool to be a feminist. 
