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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 4:15 am |
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| Schwere Viper wrote: |
I saw a documentary on the team that made Tomb Raider up to I believe the fourth game, and a full five-ten minutes is spent interviewing the guy who apparently sat in a cubicle and thought up ways to kill Lara.
Wonder if it's the same guy. |
Never played any of the Tomb Raiders, but I've heard that one of the things that people really had fun with in the first game was all the different ways that Lara could die. If we're going to be charitable, we could take that to be adolescent glee at the possibilities afforded by game technology, rather than a seething desire to see women die over and over again.
That might sound like a weak defense, but I've always thought that the general enthusiasm for GTA III was not so much bloodlust as a desire to transgress the supposed inherent boundaries/limitations of video games.
In the same way, I really can see people saying, "Whoa! Look at all the animations they have for her dying!" But then, that was when she was a pile of polygons and it was practically cartoon violence.
So the whole neck impalement is kind of like seeing Daffy Duck vivisect Bugs.
_________________
"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 4:28 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.
_________________
"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 |
Last edited by This Machine Kills Fascis on Wed Mar 06, 2013 4:35 am; edited 1 time in total |
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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.
_________________
"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.
_________________
"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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| Unfilter / Back to top |
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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: Sat Mar 09, 2013 11:56 pm |
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| end of the world wrote: |
| Dark Age Iron Savior wrote: |
| are there any good examples of violence against men being sexualized? |
you're asking this because you're not attracted to men. |
_________________
"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: Sun Mar 10, 2013 5:54 pm |
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| Adilegian wrote: |
| end of the world wrote: |
| i don't know what you think i meant or what you're trying to show. |
I'm confused on this as well. |
I was actually just responding to Daisy, but I wanted to keep your comment as part of the conversation.
I was sitting in a room with three lady friends (roommates + girlfriend) while I was reading this thread, so I asked the room Daisy's question.
A roommate mentioned porn, but I specified mainstream media and then explained the context of the thread.
Nobody could really think of anything. Then my girlfriend conducted the Google search you see above, and everyone felt :C
The fact that "violence against men being sexualized" autocorrects to "violence against women being sexualized" seems to demonstrate something about the extent to which women are sexualized in general in our society.
Probabably not that interesting a point, but it felt more profound, handed down by Google.
It could also demonstrate that our society is more comfortable talking about women being sexualized than men being sexualized. But--y'know--I don't think men are sexualized thoroughly enough to be a social issue*, especially given the social advantages that men already have.
I dunno. Women definitely sexualize men in everyday life, but I don't think that gaze reaches media often if at all, since all media is overwhelmingly controlled by men (even if you have a female screenwriter, you're likely to have a male director; and even if you have a female director, you're likely to have a male producer, etc.). So I don't think a woman's vision of sexualizing a man ever has a chance to reach an audience.
Actually, maybe in a novel? Anne Rice definitely confabulates sex/penetration/bloodplay/homoeroticism. But I don't think it has the same brutality as Tomb Raider.
Sorry, this post is mostly a braindump.
*Well, other than inspiring body dismorphia in some guys :/
_________________
"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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