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Dark Age Iron Savior
king of finders
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Location: Spacecraft, Juanelia Country
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 Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 4:19 am |
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| Adilegian wrote: |
| still think you have a right to this view? |
a "right"? |
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Toptube
Anti-cabbage Party Candidate
Joined: 23 Apr 2007
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 4:26 am |
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| Adilegian wrote: |
I think that your arguments have merit despite my disagreements with many of them.
I just think that there are some excesses in the generalities that you're using as supports that are weaker than they seem. |
that's fair.
| Quote: |
| I'm not trying to be a dick to you, in case that's how this is coming across. |
thanks, but I know you aren't trying to be a dick. Unless people are flat out sarcastic on here, I can usually figure out their stance in a conversation. Or at least gloss over that part of the issue in interest of community. |
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Adilegian
Rogue Scholar
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Q*Bert Killscreen Nightmare
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 4:27 am |
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| Dark Age Iron Savior wrote: |
| Adilegian wrote: |
| still think you have a right to this view? |
a "right"? |
I think of it as an arrogation of a right.
Author = Authority = Right
I hope the author has a good time! But there's limited value in an author's statements about their work for the following reasons:
(1) Obliviousness of audience context
(2) Obliviousness of contextual influences on their work
(3) They could be lying (Poe was good at this one actually).
So, yes, when we're talking about some level of presumed authority, I think we're in the territory of someone claiming a right to control meaning.
Authorial commentary is valuable but not an end word to the meaning of a given object.
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This Machine Kills Fascis
Unfinite Indiscovery
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Location: Inside Thomas the Tank Engine, screaming
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 4:28 am |
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I don't really feel like reading the whole thread.
Are we having two distinct conversations about violence in games and sexism/objectification?
The grotesque adolescent obsession with violence resonates more with me than the objectification angle, but maybe I just don't know enough about the game to see the rampant sexualization of the character. Not saying neo-Lara isn't sexualized; it just doesn't strike me as as egregious as the game's obsession with violence and pain, based on what I've seen (which is basically the Conan video).
I'm also don't really see the violence done to Lara as inherently misogynistic, so much as a manifestation of an a-sexual violence obsession. I definitely think sadists and misogynists will have a lot to enjoy in this game, but I don't think the violence in the game is causally connected to her gender/sex, other than--perhaps--an ill-advised attempt to make Lara "earn" her hero status (which I don't think would be an issue with a male protagonist).
So, basically: I don't think the real worry with this game is sadistic misogyny. I think it's A: the sexist perception that a woman must undergo extreme vulnerability/physical suffering to earn the hero status that Nathan Drake apparently exudes through sheer stubble
and B: the graphic nature of the violence points to 1) an adolescent obsession with violence in the gaming industry, best exemplified by God of War and 2) developers inability to comprehend the difference between the cartoon violence of 30 polygons and the disturbing uncanny valley violence of 300,000 polygons.
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| MrSkeleton wrote: |
| i dont know how to give a thing made of blood but id do it |
| evnvnv wrote: |
| If you die in the axe, you die in real life |
Last edited by This Machine Kills Fascis on Wed Mar 06, 2013 4:35 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Adilegian
Rogue Scholar
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Q*Bert Killscreen Nightmare
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 4:29 am |
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| Toptube wrote: |
| Adilegian wrote: |
I think that your arguments have merit despite my disagreements with many of them.
I just think that there are some excesses in the generalities that you're using as supports that are weaker than they seem. |
that's fair.
| Quote: |
| I'm not trying to be a dick to you, in case that's how this is coming across. |
thanks, but I know you aren't trying to be a dick. Unless people are flat out sarcastic on here, I can usually figure out their stance in a conversation. Or at least gloss over that part of the issue in interest of community. |
Cool cool, glad we're on the same page.
I'm interested in your and DJ's writing in favor of the game precisely because the criticisms that can be put against it (in many cases understandably derived from context) are also fairly easy criticisms. They're also popular criticisms, especially as formerly niche sociological words like "privilege" have come into more mainstream (and semantically fuzzier) usage. So I'm interested in unpopular defenses for the game!
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Dark Age Iron Savior
king of finders
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Location: Spacecraft, Juanelia Country
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 4:32 am |
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| Is there any perspective that is inherently valuable? |
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Adilegian
Rogue Scholar
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Q*Bert Killscreen Nightmare
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 4:38 am |
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| Dark Age Iron Savior wrote: |
| Is there any perspective that is inherently valuable? |
Whatever's useful and productive for your purposes. (The panoply of critical theories extant basically give you plenty of room to pick and choose what seems best to create sense from a work. As easy as this approach can be to tease and dismiss, it hits at how we actually contruct meaning around work regardless of theoretical outlines for meaning.)
This can even include an author's statements about their work. The difference that I'm drawing is that the author's statements can have value to a given audience but that that value is not guaranteed to be portable to another audience.
Shakespeare in the Bush is a pretty good starting point for examples along these lines. Change audience context, change meaning, and there's really no good reason why that should be programmatically undermined by authorial intent.
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Dark Age Iron Savior
king of finders
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Location: Spacecraft, Juanelia Country
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 4:49 am |
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| Adilegian wrote: |
| Dark Age Iron Savior wrote: |
| Is there any perspective that is inherently valuable? |
Whatever's useful and productive for your purposes. |
based on my time at selectbutton, in 99% of cases this is going to be "opinions that agree with how I already feel".
oh well. |
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This Machine Kills Fascis
Unfinite Indiscovery
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Location: Inside Thomas the Tank Engine, screaming
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 4:52 am |
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| This Machine Kills Fascis wrote: |
| the sexist perception that a woman must undergo extreme vulnerability/physical suffering to earn the hero status that Nathan Drake apparently exudes through sheer stubble |
I want to dwell on this a bit.
I think it's significant that Lara displays so much gesturally telegraphed vulnerability in reaction to her injuries.
The developers could always argue that they made her deaths and injuries so gruesome and lovingly animated so that you would empathize with Lara. Actually, didn't they say that they wanted male players to feel like her "protector" or whatever? This is a pretty complex cocktail of interesting/disturbing.
In this sense, Lara kind of reminds me of Mulvey's "last girl": because she's a woman in peril, she represents a socially accessible image of relatable vulnerability that adolescent males can secretly empathize with and inhabit. But that developer spokesperson guy, specifically offered a sort of camouflage explanation of the male player's relationship to Lara. Unlike in God of War or Uncharted, games that male players would probably be comfortable saying that they "inhabit" the character, in Tomb Raider, the developer spokesperson says, we "protect" her.
Okay: fair enough dude. Wink wink. No homo. Gotcha.
Anyway, psycho-sexual subterfuge aside, I think it's interesting that we're being asked to empathize with Lara's pain in a way that we're usually not with male characters. Of course, I think this has everything to do with her being a woman and the end result is some grotesque spectacle.
Now I kind of want to do a study on whether male gamers controlling female avatars feel that they become the character or whether they're controlling or observing the character from the outside.
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"Godzilla could be anyone."
| MrSkeleton wrote: |
| i dont know how to give a thing made of blood but id do it |
| evnvnv wrote: |
| If you die in the axe, you die in real life |
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This Machine Kills Fascis
Unfinite Indiscovery
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Location: Inside Thomas the Tank Engine, screaming
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 4:54 am |
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Sometimes video games remind me of that play in which people pay a black guy who looks exactly like Abe Lincoln to let them pretend to shoot him in the head over and over again.
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"Godzilla could be anyone."
| MrSkeleton wrote: |
| i dont know how to give a thing made of blood but id do it |
| evnvnv wrote: |
| If you die in the axe, you die in real life |
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Adilegian
Rogue Scholar
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Q*Bert Killscreen Nightmare
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 5:13 am |
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| Dark Age Iron Savior wrote: |
| Adilegian wrote: |
| Dark Age Iron Savior wrote: |
| Is there any perspective that is inherently valuable? |
Whatever's useful and productive for your purposes. |
based on my time at selectbutton, in 99% of cases this is going to be "opinions that agree with how I already feel".
oh well. |
This is why I prefer to argue with reference to the game itself rather than to ancillary materials, actually. I'll jump in on discussions tangential to games if it seems like there's enough interest, but I generally care more about establishing an idiosyncratic response to a game and then checking out secondary materials (interviews, reviews, etc).
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thestage
banned
Joined: 27 Sep 2011
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 5:26 am |
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Guys, the point is not that Lara is sexy, it is that Lara's worth as a character is predicated upon her sexuality undergoing some sort of debasement in order to justify our interest in it. In this situation "realistic" does not mean "hot, only with smaller boobs," though that is both empirically true and absolutely intrinsic to her character--it means "hot, but going to pay for it." Her "realistic attractiveness" is established by its relationship to violence, and that violence must, by virtue of the innocence that is projected upon her through that attractiveness, be sexual in nature. The trial-by-fire narrative trope that is being carted out here is 1) necessary, because she is a woman: she cannot "naturally" be a heroic badass, she must start out as vulnerable and have that vulnerability purified; and 2) used to justify sexual attraction to her character in the most absolute backwards and offensive way possible (people will object to my "assuming" this): it is assumed that you, as a male, would be attracted to the "vulnerable" Lara, because that vulnerability is coded in innocence, which is another word for virginity; the trial legitimizes your attraction by making it perversely "progressive;" it teaches you that though Lara's innocence has been taken away from her, which is another way to say she has been raped, she still maintains that attractiveness. the attractiveness, crucially, is always the point, always the goal. once she has been metaphorically fucked against her will, she is ready to enter life proper. she becomes "realistic," which was always just another code for "fuckable." every ounce of her character is predicated upon how fuckable she is to a male audience. that this was not "intentional" is not only irrelevant, it is insidious. it is because it is not intentional that it must be pointed out at length. this is not rocket science (even if they give people PhD's for taking this and making it 300 pages).
Last edited by thestage on Wed Mar 06, 2013 5:30 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Victor
Joined: 07 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 5:28 am |
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| Adilegian wrote: |
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Its always polarizing because What a creator says about a work is the only truth. But now people have had such personal reactions to it, they can't let it go so easily.
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This is pretty amateur thinking on the topic. I'm probably being condescending here, but, like, no one who writes or thinks seriously about criticism agrees with this statement, and for many good reasons.
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Not the least of which being the at-least partial invalidation of their chosen hobby/profession.
Also, maybe wouldn't be so quick to dismiss Intimately Involved Collaborator as Legally Coerced Marketing Shill?
Stupid looking murder game with apparently little neato-exploration still intrigues me with bleeding-edge Xperimental hair physics and kinda neat looking depth of field effects. Sadly don't have the computing power or budget to confirm my at-least somewhat ill-informed assumptions or indulge in satisfactory interactive benchmarking.
Last edited by Victor on Wed Mar 06, 2013 5:29 am; edited 1 time in total |
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klj5j6li
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 5:28 am |
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| sh-shit...western moe... |
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Rud31
forum ruler of Iraq
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: SanAnTex
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 5:44 am |
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| This Machine Kills Fascis wrote: |
| Sometimes video games remind me of that play in which people pay a black guy who looks exactly like Abe Lincoln to let them pretend to shoot him in the head over and over again. |
There's a Gamestop TV interview with the retired asian marine that was the model for all the Asians you kill in Black Ops.
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Toups
tyranically banal
Joined: 03 Dec 2006
Location: Ebon Keep
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 9:21 am |
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| This Machine Kills Fascis wrote: |
| I'm also don't really see the violence done to Lara as inherently misogynistic, so much as a manifestation of an a-sexual violence obsession. I definitely think sadists and misogynists will have a lot to enjoy in this game, but I don't think the violence in the game is causally connected to her gender/sex, other than--perhaps--an ill-advised attempt to make Lara "earn" her hero status (which I don't think would be an issue with a male protagonist). |
I mean, I think it's definitely connected to her gender/sex for this very reason. I also do not think it is much of a stretch that it's less sex and more sexuality. or sex appeal, more specifically. even if that's not a conscious intent it's complicated by the fact of lara's sex symbol status, which this game doesn't exactly undo. it seems to me -- from the revised "in depth" characterization to the graphical obsession with her hair (to the point where it's a menu item in the video options, with the vaguely creepy name "tressfx") -- that the aim is to bestow upon her a more human, grounded, relatable sex appeal than that of the exaggerated pinup that she was born as. so now she's more of a megan fox than a pam anderson. but it sure does not feel like the general priority of "fuckability" (which I'm conflating with "sex appeal" for now because I'm pretty sure the two are equivalent in gamer culture) has really left center focus. and now it is sharing screen time with graphic and cruel acts of violence. at the very least that violence is sharing psychological space with her past status as a sex symbol. either way the impalements, both figurative and literal, drive straight into her sex appeal. and that's kind of rapey.
to me it seems to echo the peculiar (if not extremely common) male fantasy of a stuck up, unattainable woman being degraded and "put in her place" via seduction, force, trickery, or whatever. I feel like the attempt to "humanize" her personality via brutalization comes from the same place.
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Talbain
Joined: 14 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 9:30 am |
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| thestage wrote: |
| 1) necessary, because she is a woman: she cannot "naturally" be a heroic badass, she must start out as vulnerable and have that vulnerability purified |
This trope is fairly gender-neutral, men also tend to start out weak and incapable and have to grow into their super-hero status. If most any character started out as a badass, they would simply be unapproachable due to their pedestal-induced status (Dante from Devil May Cry being a good example in videogames). That said, the reasons for which characters start out this way and the trials they go through often trend towards a male aesthetic of "what it means to be a hero."
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thestage
banned
Joined: 27 Sep 2011
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 9:37 am |
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| Talbain wrote: |
| thestage wrote: |
| 1) necessary, because she is a woman: she cannot "naturally" be a heroic badass, she must start out as vulnerable and have that vulnerability purified |
This trope is fairly gender-neutral, men also tend to start out weak and incapable and have to grow into their super-hero status. |
not really. sure, there will be a "moment of weakness" or a question of "what it means to be a hero," or whatever other kind of comic book thinking you might want to conjure, but that's about it. male weakness is about discovery or understanding. the strength is always "there" in the first place. female weakness is about suffering. there's a reason every single horror anything stars a woman, for example (protip: they are all about rape).
but the point is not that men can't also start out weak, it is that they do not have to start out weak. women do.
(random edit: interesting exception: evangelion, where shinji's need to grow into being capable of having sex is probably the central motif, and where fear and sex are inextricable. perhaps invalidated because he's a kid rather than a man? I don't know. rei and asuka are interesting characters in this context. any other story of this type would have merged the two into a single character and made her the protagonist.) |
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Talbain
Joined: 14 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 11:04 am |
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| thestage wrote: |
| Talbain wrote: |
| thestage wrote: |
| 1) necessary, because she is a woman: she cannot "naturally" be a heroic badass, she must start out as vulnerable and have that vulnerability purified |
This trope is fairly gender-neutral, men also tend to start out weak and incapable and have to grow into their super-hero status. |
not really. sure, there will be a "moment of weakness" or a question of "what it means to be a hero," or whatever other kind of comic book thinking you might want to conjure, but that's about it. male weakness is about discovery or understanding. the strength is always "there" in the first place. female weakness is about suffering. there's a reason every single horror anything stars a woman, for example (protip: they are all about rape). |
As portrayed to fit a male aesthetic, sure.
| Quote: |
| but the point is not that men can't also start out weak, it is that they do not have to start out weak. women do. |
Sure, not disagreeing here.
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geinou
Joined: 07 Apr 2010
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 11:43 am |
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Adilegian
Rogue Scholar
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Q*Bert Killscreen Nightmare
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 12:10 pm |
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| Victor wrote: |
Not the least of which being the at-least partial invalidation of their chosen hobby/profession.
Also, maybe wouldn't be so quick to dismiss Intimately Involved Collaborator as Legally Coerced Marketing Shill? |
(1) There are few, if any, sufficient arguments to the contrary. Start running in that direction, and I think that you'll find that the wall for that line of thinking approaches a lot faster than you expect. The validation of a conservative "lol humanities" kneejerk response is largely emotional and self-sustaining, but it tends not to last when brought out for questioning.
The fact that they've made it a hobby/profession immediately gives them more hours put toward having actually thought about it than, say, someone dismissively reverting to concepts of authorship that come almost exclusively from the pre-20th century. If we're sowing snark, you can write that time off as work put toward a fool's errand. Beyond that, like any other professional intellectual discipline, there are grades of uselessness and insight found within the field.
Most of the insight tends to fall on the line that the author's opinion of their work is not very interesting or reliable.
Hell, not even the most conservative of literary critics of the early 20th century gave a damn about the author's opinion of their own work. If you're going to argue that there's a personal investment interfering with acquiescing the author their rightful place as Arbiter of Meaning, you've got a lot more work to do on this.
If you're not interested in putting in that work, that's fine! You might even have put that work into it and don't care/have time to explain it here. However, if you haven't, you're mistaken to think that that your bias in favor of one conclusion (possibly under a rubric of "common sense" which wouldn't fly in any other topic you probably care about beyond a passing interest) means that anyone holding an opinion to the contrary does so out of desperate self-preservation.
(2) How free do you think someone who's speaking about a major Western videogame franchise (on the company dime, no less) is to acknowledge publicly "I can see why people think that this game is about rape?" This question is part rhetorical and part not. The assumed invisibility of corporate law when discussing public pronouncements of what corporate products mean is itself naive.
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Victor
Joined: 07 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 5:44 pm |
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| Adilegian wrote: |
| The fact that they've made it a hobby/profession immediately gives them more hours put toward having actually thought about it than, say, someone dismissively reverting to concepts |
Hmm. That's an interesting quote I have cherry picked that somehow seems relevant. |
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boojiboy7
narcissistic irony-laden twat
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: take me on a blatant doom trip.
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 6:16 pm |
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| Care to explain, or just gonna snark it? |
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parker
a wolf adventuring
Joined: 31 May 2007
Location: suplex city
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 7:33 pm |
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What is with the dick in a suit avatar
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Amish Chipmunk
Joined: 24 Aug 2012
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 8:10 pm |
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| Victor wrote: |
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Hmm. That's an interesting picture I have cherry picked that somehow seems relevant.
No real hate, Victor. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity. Although I would like you to back your argument a bit more.
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SuperWes
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 9:39 pm |
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| Adilegian wrote: |
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| It was genuinely never meant to be talked about in that way. |
How can someone possibly have made a thing that people experience and still think you have a right to this view? This is incredibly naive. |
This quote is being taken out of context here. She's saying that the presenter wasn't instructed to call the events "rape" in order to drum up controversy. It "was never meant to be talked about in that way" by the marketing people. See the next sentence:
| Quote: |
| It was genuinely never meant to be talked about in that way. There was a lot of speculation about how this was just cynical PR and was deliberately described that way to create news and hits, absolutely not. |
In fact, later in that interview she talks about struggling with how people did interpret the presentation and wonders how she would have reacted if she had been presented with things they way they had been.
I've been thinking about this comment, and I'm kind of offended by the implications:
| CubaLibre wrote: |
| But nobody had to strand Lara Croft on an island with a bunch of lawless psychopaths. This isn't journalism, it isn't news. If you're really dedicated to making an Uncharted-lite game about Lara Croft's origins, here I'll do it for you: same island, same shipwreck, same survival theme, same jumping/climbing mechanics... no lawless psychopaths. Instead she has to explore tombs and survive the elements and tigers and gorillas and shit, like the first game. Boom, problem solved. They could probably take the game they have and make the game I just described in like six months. Same art assets, same overall arc of action, you'd need some new level design because there wouldn't be any cover shooting. There, I just designed a rapeless Tomb Raider and it does all the stuff you want this new game to do (which isn't even great stuff, let's not get me started on how disappointed I am in this game on a mechanical and design level apart from any sexual violence). |
How I'm reading this is that in order to avoid potentially having every single game element interpreted as rape (by psychopaths and random white dudes on the internet) the developers should have gone out of their way to create a universe that has no violence between humans. Why should this even be a concern of theirs? If shows like CSI and Law and Order SVU can expressly acknowledge that rape exists why does this game have to walk on eggshells about presenting an evil man who's trying to kill a woman because it might accidentally come off as rape?
They should certainly try their hardest to avoid allusions to rape given the context, but they've done this. It's clear to anyone who's played the game that these men are out to kill. Is appeasing people who have already written your game off due to use mismanaged marketing really enough cause to redo the whole game?
-Wes
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analogos
bravely default crying fairy
Joined: 10 Jun 2007
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 10:08 pm |
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| well the other reason to have gone with cuba's idea is that it might have actually ended up being a tomb raider game |
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Ronnoc
Joined: 26 Feb 2010
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 10:16 pm |
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| SuperWes wrote: |
They should certainly try their hardest to avoid allusions to rape given the context, but they've done this. It's clear to anyone who's played the game that these men are out to kill. |
It's actually not, though. Swarm wrote in the axe thread about how the game contains attempted rape because, guess what, if you win the QTE of the guy dragging Laura out of a hole by her legs, you don't get to see the part where he 'just' murders her.
Last edited by Ronnoc on Thu Mar 07, 2013 1:59 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Adilegian
Rogue Scholar
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Q*Bert Killscreen Nightmare
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 10:37 pm |
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| boojiboy7 wrote: |
| Care to explain, or just gonna snark it? |
Pretty sure that's the whole act.
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armed police catrider
Joined: 03 Dec 2009
Location: toronto
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| Posted: Wed Mar 06, 2013 10:58 pm |
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| SuperWes wrote: |
How I'm reading this is that in order to avoid potentially having every single game element interpreted as rape (by psychopaths and random white dudes on the internet) the developers should have gone out of their way to create a universe that has no violence between humans. Why should this even be a concern of theirs? If shows like CSI and Law and Order SVU can expressly acknowledge that rape exists why does this game have to walk on eggshells about presenting an evil man who's trying to kill a woman because it might accidentally come off as rape?
They should certainly try their hardest to avoid allusions to rape given the context, but they've done this. It's clear to anyone who's played the game that these men are out to kill. Is appeasing people who have already written your game off due to use mismanaged marketing really enough cause to redo the whole game?
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I am not trying to pick on you or be stubborn but I feel like I should point out that you are specifically trying to defend the human-on-human violence in this game after having complained that the general non-gamer public sees games as being about nothing but violence.
And again, the issue here is not that there is outright rape in the game, it's that the overall narrative is peddling in the idea that a young attractive female character can only achieve legitimacy as an action protagonist if she is made vulnerable to and endures intense physical and emotional violence and hardship. This is the central conceit of the game's narrative and the entire experience (perhaps unavoidably) takes on a cruel and fetishistic texture as a result. Context, people, context. |
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Adilegian
Rogue Scholar
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Q*Bert Killscreen Nightmare
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| Posted: Thu Mar 07, 2013 1:04 am |
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| SuperWes wrote: |
| Adilegian wrote: |
| Quote: |
| It was genuinely never meant to be talked about in that way. |
How can someone possibly have made a thing that people experience and still think you have a right to this view? This is incredibly naive. |
This quote is being taken out of context here. She's saying that the presenter wasn't instructed to call the events "rape" in order to drum up controversy. It "was never meant to be talked about in that way" by the marketing people. See the next sentence:
| Quote: |
| It was genuinely never meant to be talked about in that way. There was a lot of speculation about how this was just cynical PR and was deliberately described that way to create news and hits, absolutely not. |
In fact, later in that interview she talks about struggling with how people did interpret the presentation and wonders how she would have reacted if she had been presented with things they way they had been. |
On the first point: I didn't read that following sentence in the same way. It looked to me as though she were building off the former and emphasizing some measure of sincerity behind the trailer, culminating in an even greater indignation that it could be taken as cynical exploitation. I can see the way you've read it, though.
Also, I perhaps overlooked the latter point you've raised, so: point noted!
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Ronk
saucy Scott Pilgrim fanfic
Joined: 29 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Thu Mar 07, 2013 1:57 am |
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| armed police catrider wrote: |
| SuperWes wrote: |
How I'm reading this is that in order to avoid potentially having every single game element interpreted as rape (by psychopaths and random white dudes on the internet) the developers should have gone out of their way to create a universe that has no violence between humans. Why should this even be a concern of theirs? If shows like CSI and Law and Order SVU can expressly acknowledge that rape exists why does this game have to walk on eggshells about presenting an evil man who's trying to kill a woman because it might accidentally come off as rape?
They should certainly try their hardest to avoid allusions to rape given the context, but they've done this. It's clear to anyone who's played the game that these men are out to kill. Is appeasing people who have already written your game off due to use mismanaged marketing really enough cause to redo the whole game?
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I am not trying to pick on you or be stubborn but I feel like I should point out that you are specifically trying to defend the human-on-human violence in this game after having complained that the general non-gamer public sees games as being about nothing but violence.
And again, the issue here is not that there is outright rape in the game, it's that the overall narrative is peddling in the idea that a young attractive female character can only achieve legitimacy as an action protagonist if she is made vulnerable to and endures intense physical and emotional violence and hardship. This is the central conceit of the game's narrative and the entire experience (perhaps unavoidably) takes on a cruel and fetishistic texture as a result. Context, people, context. |
i am however going to be the jerk and jump in to say that a show like Law and Order: SVU does what it does because it's a procedural crime drama that deals almost exclusively with crimes about rape and sexual assault, while this is (supposed to be) a game that tells the origin story about a woman who jumps around tombs, solving puzzles and finding treasure. why was this specifically something that needed to be told as an origin story for this specific character? and i agree with armed police catrider (and others itt) in thinking that they made it just to service the trope that "women need to go through this kind of fucking hell to be strong heroes" narrative.
i mean cuba's tomb raider reboot has plenty of opportunities for struggle, danger, thrills and empowerment that would've made sense for her character, without any cover based shooting or questionable psychopaths. i mean lara was shooting people in the old games but even then it wasn't cover based and even then no one was super rapey.
it just feels totally unnecessary. like what if the uncharted reboot for ps4 was about a young nathan drake who was kidnapped overseas and forced to see his parents violently executed by gunpoint and that's why he's a lovable quipster who hunts for treasure and shoots dudes?
like i get this is supposed to be a "reboot" but this isn't even the same fucking franchise anymore other than you're controlling a lara croft.
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Last edited by Ronk on Thu Mar 07, 2013 6:47 am; edited 2 times in total |
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apfEID
Joined: 11 Dec 2006
Location: NYC / Lordran
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| Posted: Thu Mar 07, 2013 2:04 am |
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SVU isn't exactly something people should look to as an example of how to handle rape in popular entertainment.
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Ronk
saucy Scott Pilgrim fanfic
Joined: 29 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Thu Mar 07, 2013 2:05 am |
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like jesus, before this thread i had just kind of an indifferent to negative view of this reboot, having some problems with the trailers but figuring that maybe i'll play the game and now i've researched and seen a playthrough and have heard some of the defenses itt and i'm actively disgusted by this game even existing. beyond the unnecessary thrashing of lara's character, it's just a lazy uncharted clone that has optional tombs. fucking miserable.
but at the very least, this has gotten me interested in playing tomb raider anniversary. (i haven't played any tomb raiders since the first four on playstation.)
also i feel like Film Crit Hulk's write-up about Batman: Arkham City has some merit in this discussion.
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Ronnoc
Joined: 26 Feb 2010
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CubaLibre
the road lawyer
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: Balmer
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| Posted: Thu Mar 07, 2013 4:40 am |
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| SuperWes wrote: |
| How I'm reading this is that in order to avoid potentially having every single game element interpreted as rape (by psychopaths and random white dudes on the internet) the developers should have gone out of their way to create a universe that has no violence between humans. |
No it's more like if you want to make a Lara Croft origin story there are a hundred ways to do it that don't involve stranding her on an island full of rapists.
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SuperWes
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
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| Posted: Thu Mar 07, 2013 10:11 pm |
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| CubaLibre wrote: |
| SuperWes wrote: |
| How I'm reading this is that in order to avoid potentially having every single game element interpreted as rape (by psychopaths and random white dudes on the internet) the developers should have gone out of their way to create a universe that has no violence between humans. |
No it's more like if you want to make a Lara Croft origin story there are a hundred ways to do it that don't involve stranding her on an island full of rapists. |
Done. No rapists. The other people (men and women, mostly men) on the boat are treated the exact same way as Lara, and the only thing that leads people to think of rape is male gaze guilt being projected on these characters.
As for the sanctity of the Lara Croft origin story, I guess I don't agree. I think it's up to the developers to decide what they want to do with the game's history, and the work should stand alone, as nearly any work should. They don't owe it anything, and believing that they do leads down the dark, dark nerd road that ends up with people trying to create a timeline for the Mario games. If they want to make a Tomb Raider game with no tombs they should be allowed to. If they want to make a top-down co-op shooter starring Lara Croft they should be allowed to as well, and the work should stand on its own.
-Wes
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Lick Meth
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: A constant state of flux
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| Posted: Thu Mar 07, 2013 10:53 pm |
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| SuperWes wrote: |
| CubaLibre wrote: |
| SuperWes wrote: |
| How I'm reading this is that in order to avoid potentially having every single game element interpreted as rape (by psychopaths and random white dudes on the internet) the developers should have gone out of their way to create a universe that has no violence between humans. |
No it's more like if you want to make a Lara Croft origin story there are a hundred ways to do it that don't involve stranding her on an island full of rapists. |
Done. No rapists. The other people (men and women, mostly men) on the boat are treated the exact same way as Lara, and the only thing that leads people to think of rape is male gaze guilt being projected on these characters.
As for the sanctity of the Lara Croft origin story, I guess I don't agree. I think it's up to the developers to decide what they want to do with the game's history, and the work should stand alone, as nearly any work should. They don't owe it anything, and believing that they do leads down the dark, dark nerd road that ends up with people trying to create a timeline for the Mario games. If they want to make a Tomb Raider game with no tombs they should be allowed to. If they want to make a top-down co-op shooter starring Lara Croft they should be allowed to as well, and the work should stand on its own.
-Wes |
How about just get rid of the island full of rapists and replace it with dozens of plausible alternatives with a much more limited possibility of scenes coming off as exploitative, like a mountain or something? Stop acting like the island is literally the only possibility and use a bit of lateral thinking for fuck's sake. And yes, they "should be allowed to" make a game with questionable scenes such as this, but that shouldn't mean that they can escape criticism and the poring over its dodgier details.
Oh, and there is already a co-op wide view shooter with Lara Croft in and it has tombs and it doesn't feature questionable rape scenes and it's quite fun. |
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Takashi
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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SuperWes
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
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| Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2013 2:18 am |
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| Lick Meth wrote: |
| How about just get rid of the island full of rapists and replace it with dozens of plausible alternatives with a much more limited possibility of scenes coming off as exploitative, like a mountain or something? Stop acting like the island is literally the only possibility and use a bit of lateral thinking for fuck's sake. And yes, they "should be allowed to" make a game with questionable scenes such as this, but that shouldn't mean that they can escape criticism and the poring over its dodgier details. |
I think my problem with this is it implies that Uncharted + female lead = rape allusions, when I don't think that's the case. It asks for self-censorship to avoid undeserved controvercy, and that's bullshit.
-Wes
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CubaLibre
the road lawyer
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: Balmer
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| Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2013 2:21 am |
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| SuperWes wrote: |
| Done. No rapists. The other people (men and women, mostly men) on the boat are treated the exact same way as Lara, and the only thing that leads people to think of rape is male gaze guilt being projected on these characters. |
"Male gaze guilt" is a new one on me and some kind of perfect storm of willful ignorance, so forget about it. I already know your position that the game is totally not rapey at all, there are no suggested or implied or symbolic rapes whatsoever. You are wrong but that's as far as this thing can possibly go.
| Lick Meth wrote: |
| Oh, and there is already a co-op wide view shooter with Lara Croft in and it has tombs and it doesn't feature questionable rape scenes and it's quite fun. |
I uh... I think he knows that. I'm pretty sure that's his point.
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