Bechdel test and other media analysis about discrimination

Started by TheFrighter, Sat 16/01/2021 17:44:12

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Blondbraid

Quote from: WHAM on Fri 12/02/2021 20:59:36
A thousand downloads is nothing to be scoffed at, and comparing yourself to AAA titles with millions of funding is senseless.
The whole game industry started from small, and grew up over time. Now we need to grow a new branch of it, if we want to see a new kind of audience catered to, and a thousand downloads is a damn fine start!
As inspiring as you sound, I want you to know the reason I got into gaming in the first place was exactly because I was able to find a mainstream AAA heroine, Lara Croft, to relate to and show me games
didn't need to be exclusively about muscle-men or relegated to the cheap and patronizing girl-game ghetto, and I want other girls growing up to have the same opportunities, because as well as my games are going,
I cannot build a new branch alone.

But it's not just about skills and funds, it's also about the fact that a great deal of man-children will actively try to push women out of game development and criticism too.


WHAM

That's kind of funny. It seems that, like most icons, Lara is many things depending on who you ask. She's either a sex icon driving women away from games with her polygonal titties and short shorts, while male gamers drool over her, or she's a strong, inspiring female protagonist.
Wrongthinker and anticitizen one. Pending removal to memory hole. | WHAMGAMES proudly presents: The Night Falls, a community roleplaying game

Blondbraid

Quote from: WHAM on Fri 12/02/2021 23:07:40
That's kind of funny. It seems that, like most icons, Lara is many things depending on who you ask. She's either a sex icon driving women away from games with her polygonal titties and short shorts, while male gamers drool over her, or she's a strong, inspiring female protagonist.
The fact that you think you can boil her down to those stereotypes so easily just goes to show how little you understand.

No, Lara isn't a perfect unifying icon, she's what got me personally into gaming, and at that time, she was the best representation I had access to.

You don't get what it's like to not be represented, because guys are ALWAYS represented in every piece of media, even the ones exclusively marketed to little girls, meanwhile, as a girl, you're given a small box of princesses, eye candy  and love interests to fit into, and if you want a fellow female character who doesn't fit into that narrow box, countless man-children will complain that you are forcing your politics onto them, and merely being a woman will be seen as a political statement by them.

And all the while, I keep seeing men who already have all the characters they could possibly want, presented in opulent high-budget games, their heroes stamped on every thumbnail and they themselves catered to by
every single mainstream game company full of professional developers, tell women to "just make your own games" when they ask for a sliver of what the dudes have already had for decades. And all the while a huge chunk of them will start a massive uproar at the mere idea that any of "their" game companies might stop catering exclusively to them and maybe, just maybe start to include women in their projects and marketing.

Beats me why. Maybe they think it's a zero-sum game and are afraid the game industry will start to treat them the same way they've treated female players?  (roll)

All I know is that I'm infinitely tired of constantly having to justify myself just for wanting to female heroes to be just as diverse and respected as male heroes.


Crimson Wizard

#323
Quote from: Blondbraid on Fri 12/02/2021 18:14:37
Quote from: TheFrighter on Fri 12/02/2021 17:41:55
Quote from: WHAM on Fri 12/02/2021 10:14:53
Is this just a reverse case of the "all asians look the same to westerners" trope?
Bizarre thing is, in manga and anime the charachter are usually japanese but are draw in full pink skin and even with blonde hair and blue eyes. And even in videogames.

_
I got the impression the "default" anime skin color was a more neutral white (and much of Asia too has a pale skin ideal, not necessarily western), and as for blonde hair, there's also a lot of pink and blue hair. From what I've seen, since so many characters have generic anime faces, the animators use exotic hair colors to discern them instead.

Wondered about this once, and found few articles that gave me a rough overview of the situation. In brief from what I recall, the japanese do not distinct peoples race by the skin colour as much as westerners, they use other features to do so, and even then they usually tend to distinct characters by personality traits rather than nationality. Also, if anyone's curious, you can find tables of colours for anime and manga that tell how standard hair or eye colour and even facial expression match with certain personality trait :).



Quote from: Blondbraid on Fri 12/02/2021 20:37:46
2. How many of the men in the AAA industry do you think truly want to make yet another bro-dude shooter, and how many are made to do so by executives?
Toby Gard has stated himself that making Lara Croft a woman had nothing to do with developers making him, but because all their earlier concepts making the Tomb Raider a man only led to lesser copies of Indiana Jones,
and on the flipside, the developers behind Remember me said that they had to fight tooth and nail to get to make a game with a female protagonist, but it was publishers and executives from above that tried to force them
to make her a man, and Naughty Dog had to remove the female co-lead Ellie from the front of the cover of The Last of Us for a similar reason.

Well, damn.
I became a fantasy maniac in the 90-ies when the post-soviet market became fully open for western media, have read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi novels, predominantly from mid-XX century USA. Then around late 90-ies got so dissatisfied with the whole genre that stopped reading it completely for the next 15 or so years (even missed now super popular things like "Witcher" and "Song of Ice and Fire").
The reason was that they were sooo same - in everything - from protagonist type to their relationships, to plot twists, to the fantasy world inhabitants.

This may sound silly, but around early 2000 I was pondering over writing my our RPG games, and set a rule for myself that if I ever do one, in my games there will be more different characters and more different races. Heck, in my program I even did not hardcode "biological sex types" but made a customizable list of sexes per species lol. And that was long before learning about all the contemporary social discussions (Internet was not much a thing for me until mid-2000ies).

Sorry if this is not directly relevant to the discussion, I just had to say this, because that's what also was bugging me all those years :).

Crimson Wizard

#324
Speaking of games, I dont think strategy genre was much mentioned in the thread?

Something I thought about recently, but number of fantasy or sci fi strategy games had main female characters. "Heroes of Might and Magic" always was pretty gender diverse, in both heroes and units. Earlier games had rather generic campaign and stories, but starting from HoMM III there were female campaign protagonists too. But then, these games were based on party RPG game series, the genre that's commonly gender diverse on its own.

Starcraft series had a female protagonist with a pretty complicated relationship to the rest of the characters (this was afaik the first time Blizzard played the "good character turning bad" thing), and she has got something like a cult following among players.
I don't think Warcraft had fully fledged characters at all until Warcraft 3, but there they had both female protagonists and also Night Elves were practically a race with matriarchal society (or so I remember): that race is represented by a portrait of female unit usually.

With strategy games ofcourse characters themselves may seem less important, as you are mostly dealing with generic units in game, and characters serve rather as a background setting. So perhaps they are less important in the context of the given problem. Or do they? dunno.

Ali

This is purely speculative, and I apologise if it's off-topic. But I wouldn't be surprised if the US occupation of Japan had some influence on the development of (seemingly) western character art in Manga and Anime. I know that the American occupiers were very concerned with propaganda in the Japanese film industry - not just censoring but deliberately promoting American values and, perhaps inevitably, western aesthetics. Pigs and Battleships is a terrific Japanese film satirising the period.

On topic, Blondbraid isn't the first woman I've met who absolutely loved Lara Croft. But that doesn't mean Croft wasn't designed to be sexually objectified. We don't have to take the binary view that everything is either good or bad.

FormosaFalanster

#326
Manga art emerged from long traditions of drawing in Japan. The appearance of wider eyes in manga art stems from inspiration from American cartoons like Dumbo, not being forced on the Japanese, but because artists never thought of drawing huge eyes before and were impressed by the potential it gave for facial expressions.


Quote from: Ali on Sat 13/02/2021 02:22:56
deliberately promoting American values and, perhaps inevitably, western aesthetics.


This is what I have an issue with, this tendency for Americans to equal "western" with their own US vision. All while they relentlessly trash mainland Europeans. Or to be back on topic, there is no reason why Mainland European males from, say, France or Italy (two cultures that are treated in a monstruously xenophobic way in Anglo-American media) would feel "represented" by a white American actor whom they know probably hates and despises them deep inside.

Americans make it all about race because it is their main debate and main vision but, as a multiethnic and multilingual people with no roots in the Anglosphere, I find language a much more important tool of discimination. Native Anglophones of any skin colour have a huge privilege and a huge power over non-Anglophones of any colour. Just ask yourself which language we have to use just to have this conversation in the first place.

Having roots in both Mainland Europe and East Asia, I can tell you both cultural spheres are not impressed at all when they see Americans or other Anglophones talking in their behalf. And we would be interested to see a movie or a game with an East Asian person that wasn't raised in an Anglophone country and whose worth is not only assessed in comparison to the Anglosphere, or a Mainland European who is not a laughable weird coward punching ball whose eating habits are mocked by people who eat hamburgers for breakfast.

And personally, I'd love to see someone whose identity is to be multicultural, equally from different linguistic spheres, and not the Anglosphere. This has never happened. And that's what I try to portray in most stories I write.

Crimson Wizard

#327
@FormosaFalanster
you know, one of the reasons I made my first post in this thread secretly was that one of the articles linked by TheFrighter in original post has this paragraph:

Quote
The Villalobos Test focuses on representation for Latina women and fighting common stereotypes. Firstly, there must be a Latina lead, and subsequently the lead â€" or another Latina character â€" must be shown as professional or college educated, as well as speaking unaccented English, and must not be sexualised (as a key character trait).

That raised my eyebrow, although on one hand I realize that's related to some common problem in USA media, but on another, generally, there should not be anything wrong in Latina person speaking accented English or not speaking English at all, as not only they have their own language, but they may as well be citizens of another both non-Latino and non-english speaking country. I.e. you would not want to have this test formulated literally same way for, say, France.
Also, again I see this from personal perspective, but it feels kind of... weird, that speaking with/out an accent and having education is put in a trait group together. I.e. what if there's, say, German professor who speaks any other given language with a german accent - would that be seen as negative trait? Does not that imply and strengthen another stereotype about people speaking with an accent being less educated?

FormosaFalanster

I totally agree. I speak English with a heavy accent and that should be fine. Native Anglophones should be more tolerant with people speaking with an accent. The fact that a character speak with an accent means they can speak several languages so they are not intellectually inferior. A "non-white" should not have to be a perfect Anglophone to be seen as successfu - neither should a "white" from a non english speaking country.

The world is full of non-native English speakers in successful position yet we keep portraying the world as dominated by people who speak like a CNN news anchor. That's like the bad stereotype of "black people acting white" and giving up all their black culture to act like a white person in order to be accepted. We should not have to be raised in the English language to be seen as competent and intellectually equal to others.

Again, from my perspective, it is native Anglophones who are not as clever because you can be sure they do not speak any foreign language.

But that's because the test you posted here is solely for the satisfaction of Anglophones. It disregards what us people would think about it. And they do not realize we have to speak that language only because it is forced into us.



heltenjon

Quote from: Blondbraid on Fri 12/02/2021 23:40:28
Quote from: WHAM on Fri 12/02/2021 23:07:40
That's kind of funny. It seems that, like most icons, Lara is many things depending on who you ask. She's either a sex icon driving women away from games with her polygonal titties and short shorts, while male gamers drool over her, or she's a strong, inspiring female protagonist.
The fact that you think you can boil her down to those stereotypes so easily just goes to show how little you understand.
Oh, come on. The guy makes a fair point that Lara Croft has been viewed both ways. Don't go "how little you understand" because of his opinions in another thread. I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that Lara Croft at first was criticized for being eye candy for male players, but then it turned out that the games attracted more female players, presumably because they liked being able to play as a woman. And the games were good, so the boys didn't mind either. Anyway, in later years, the breast proportions seem to be scaled down without anyone thinking that's a bad move.

QuoteNo, Lara isn't a perfect unifying icon, she's what got me personally into gaming, and at that time, she was the best representation I had access to.

One must start somewhere. I happen to think Wonder Woman was a great movie, and that the character has been written well in some comics I've read, even though she has inherited a skimpy outfit. It turns out she can still be an icon or a role model. But I would secretly wish for the next generation of superheroines to wear something more practical than a revealing suit - the chainmail bikini trope. If the artist want her to be pretty, she could be while in her secret identity. In the movies, this is frequently done with the less iconic heroes (like X-Men wearing what amounts to a uniform), but I realize you can't easily do that with Wonder Woman or Supergirl (in a skirt!) because the image is better known.

QuoteAll I know is that I'm infinitely tired of constantly having to justify myself just for wanting to female heroes to be just as diverse and respected as male heroes.
You don't have to. I think most of the people here want that. But showing how and why white males dominate as protagonists, is useful by drawing a larger picture.

Crimson Wizard

#330
Quote from: FormosaFalanster on Sat 13/02/2021 03:30:58
But that's because the test you posted here is solely for the satisfaction of Anglophones. It disregards what us people would think about it. And they do not realize we have to speak that language only because it is forced into us.

Ahhh, well, guess each sees this in their own way; personally I would say it's "forced" about like, say, gravity forces us, it's a part of the enviroment, consequence of the political influence anglophone countries had since mid-XIX century. If I recall right, French language was considered ultimate before that, and before that - maybe Italian.
I'd even say this may come handy, as you learn 1 extra language and then can speak with almost everyone :).
But ofcourse this causes these issues when perfectly speaking a language becomes a stereotypical requirement to fight other stereotypes :).

FormosaFalanster

Truth is that I love the English language and the culture that goes with it. I love speaking English. I love that there is a lingua franca we can all use to communicate with each other.

I like it less when those who speak it natively just take it for granted and use their mastery of it as leverage. In fact it has not always been the case. The English language is seen as the international one since WWI but its native speakers started seeing it at the standard way of thought only once Anglophone pop culture skyrocketed in the 1950s onward.

It's less about business or politics and more about culture. Whether the common language is French or English or Latin or whatever, people in business or politics would never see someone with a foreign accent as inferior or laughable, they would just communicate to acheive their goal, they would probably be sensitive not to appear as dominant even if they were. But we talk about cultural representation here, just as in the test you posted: in business I see foreign speakers who are successful but on TV they all have to speak perfectly? Why?

KyriakosCH

Quote from: FormosaFalanster on Fri 12/02/2021 13:07:10
Quote from: Blondbraid on Fri 12/02/2021 13:01:57
And what have you faced in this thread exactly?

A computer screen.

Computer screens are scary.

Also, I felt like I shouldn't be the first one to keep to their word, so maybe I will post again  :=
This is the Way - A dark allegory. My Twitter!  My Youtube!

Honza

Quote from: Ali on Sat 13/02/2021 02:22:56
On topic, Blondbraid isn't the first woman I've met who absolutely loved Lara Croft. But that doesn't mean Croft wasn't designed to be sexually objectified. We don't have to take the binary view that everything is either good or bad.

I have to admit I'm not entirely clear on the line where physical attractiveness becomes objectification. I find the new Lara better-looking than the original one (not only because of polygon count). Does this mean that I "objectify" her more?

EDIT: maybe to phrase this a little less clumsily - if you design a character to be attractive, aren't you implicitly making them a sexual object?

KyriakosCH

#334
^I think that the goal is to have the audience (reader,player etc) form attachments to the lead/other. This isn't something which can only (or even best) be done through sexuality, but due to laziness this is the norm.
There are a tonne of other ways to feel invested in what is going on, but we are talking about media, which most of the time are into using the simplest things either out of time/money concerns or lack of talent.

(of course there are times when sexuality is a main theme of the work anyway - don't know about the new Lara Croft games; the old ones certainly used that angle, indirectly at first, then rather directly with box art. But I never played any LC game, so can't comment about the story or gameplay itself)
This is the Way - A dark allegory. My Twitter!  My Youtube!

Ali

Quote from: FormosaFalanster on Sat 13/02/2021 03:30:58
I totally agree. I speak English with a heavy accent and that should be fine. Native Anglophones should be more tolerant with people speaking with an accent. The fact that a character speak with an accent means they can speak several languages so they are not intellectually inferior. A "non-white" should not have to be a perfect Anglophone to be seen as successfu - neither should a "white" from a non english speaking country.

I think it's perverse that a Bechdel-style test should require actors to speak "unaccented English" because there's no such thing. And it wrongly centres a particular accent (almost certainly an accent associated with white, middle-class speakers) as neutral. One of the things I try to appreciate about conversations on this forum is that I'm often speaking with people who are writing in English as a second language, which is enormously impressive given how bad we English speakers are with foreign languages.

It's true, of course, that southern Europeans (and/or Catholics) have faced discrimination in Northern Europe and the US. But it's also worth acknowledging that social hierarchies have gradients. In Jim Crow era America, Italian Americans could face overt discrimination, but still benefit from a status that excluded African Americans.

Blondbraid

Quote from: heltenjon on Sat 13/02/2021 03:41:53
Quote from: Blondbraid on Fri 12/02/2021 23:40:28
Quote from: WHAM on Fri 12/02/2021 23:07:40
That's kind of funny. It seems that, like most icons, Lara is many things depending on who you ask. She's either a sex icon driving women away from games with her polygonal titties and short shorts, while male gamers drool over her, or she's a strong, inspiring female protagonist.
The fact that you think you can boil her down to those stereotypes so easily just goes to show how little you understand.
Oh, come on. The guy makes a fair point that Lara Croft has been viewed both ways. Don't go "how little you understand" because of his opinions in another thread. I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that Lara Croft at first was criticized for being eye candy for male players, but then it turned out that the games attracted more female players, presumably because they liked being able to play as a woman. And the games were good, so the boys didn't mind either. Anyway, in later years, the breast proportions seem to be scaled down without anyone thinking that's a bad move.
My reply was based on what he'd previously written in this thread. And while I can agree that there is a point to be had about Lara Croft being a divisive character, I felt on edge because the way the reply was said felt like Wham was trying to pull a "gotcha" with his wording, and I felt that he didn't understood was I was trying to say.
Quote from: Honza on Sat 13/02/2021 08:48:13
Quote from: Ali on Sat 13/02/2021 02:22:56
On topic, Blondbraid isn't the first woman I've met who absolutely loved Lara Croft. But that doesn't mean Croft wasn't designed to be sexually objectified. We don't have to take the binary view that everything is either good or bad.

I have to admit I'm not entirely clear on the line where physical attractiveness becomes objectification. I find the new Lara better-looking than the original one (not only because of polygon count). Does this mean that I "objectify" her more?
Everyone has preferences, but that in itself doesn't objectify the character more, rather, objectification is about distilling someone down to only the things you find attractive to you to the point you can't see them as a full human being anymore.
Quote from: KyriakosCH on Sat 13/02/2021 08:54:44
^I think that the goal is to have the audience (reader,player etc) form attachments to the lead/other. This isn't something which can only (or even best) be done through sexuality, but due to laziness this is the norm.
There are a tonne of other ways to feel invested in what is going on, but we are talking about media, which most of the time are into using the simplest things either out of time/money concerns or lack of talent.

(of course there are times when sexuality is a main theme of the work anyway - don't know about the new Lara Croft games; the old ones certainly used that angle, indirectly at first, then rather directly with box art. But I never played any LC game, so can't comment about the story or gameplay itself)
That's a good point, tough I will add that trying to create an attachment and identification to the character through sexuality as the main line is near impossible due to what I mentioned on objectification.

As for the pre-reboot Tomb Raider Games however, as someone who've played them all, I don't think Lara ever was particularly heavily sexualized in the actual games beyond some revealing outfits and Barbie body proportions, she was mostly presented as an aloof badass focused on finding adventure for the sake of it, rather, it was the marketing and promotional materials surroundig the game that put her in pin-up shoots and played on her sex appeal. Personally, I was never too bothered by Lara's clothes because at the time, the early 2000s, most other video game heroines wore even more egregious things, like the chainmail bikinis im most fantasy games felt far more egregious to me than shorts and tank-top, especially considering I myself has worn that when touristing in warm countries (I even had to take off my jacket when on top of the alps because all the climbing made me warm, so it's hard for me to fault Lara for going with a tank top in the Andes).
Here's a link to the Tomb Raider: Underworld demo so you can play and judge for yourself.

Meanwhile, while I can appreciate that the reboot wanted to give Lara a more realistic design, I don't consider it a feminist victory when the developers also decided Lara had to be constantly crying and having a ton of daddy issues in order to be a "realistic" female character, and instead of marketing presenting her as a pin-up, there was marketing presenting her as a vulnerable girlfriend that the player should want to protect from evil would-be rapists.

I've already written a ton about how I hated the reboot in other forums, but long story short, I've been seeing a pattern of when several insecure male publishers want to cash in on the "girlpower" market, but still reassure immature boys in the audience that their female hero won't threaten them, they usually go down either of two different routes to do so;

1. Present their female hero as an unquestionable badass, but give her a ridiculously sexualized appearance to show that "it's ok, she's just a make-believe fantasy figure and we'll still pander to boys".

2. Give her a serious and somewhat realistic appearance, but give her some stereotypical feminine trauma, like molestation or daddy issues, severe enough to make her have a hysterical breakdown
whenever the story feels like it and she needs a man to bail her out, as if to say "don't worry, she might pretend to be a badass, but she's secretly super vulnerable to dudes beneath that".

And so the reboot basically solved the problem of people thinking Lara was too far into category 1 by moving her into category 2 instead, and so, instead of being a powerful woman capable of fighting a T-rex on her own,
the reboot games presented Lara as an insecure teenager, who only learns to fight when a super evil Russian stereotype tries to molest and strangle her simultaneously, cries about it, and continuously have hysterical breakdowns and
need male mentor figures to take care of her for the rest of the following reboot games, and instead of raiding tombs because she wants to, she keeps moping about how her daddy issues force her to do it,
or a supernatural power threatens to kill her if she stops, effectively removing her agency as a character. And that's not even going into the gore and torture-porn aspect of all the gruesome death and torture scenes in the reboot.  :-X


Blondbraid

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Sat 13/02/2021 01:32:35
Well, damn.
I became a fantasy maniac in the 90-ies when the post-soviet market became fully open for western media, have read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi novels, predominantly from mid-XX century USA. Then around late 90-ies got so dissatisfied with the whole genre that stopped reading it completely for the next 15 or so years (even missed now super popular things like "Witcher" and "Song of Ice and Fire").
The reason was that they were sooo same - in everything - from protagonist type to their relationships, to plot twists, to the fantasy world inhabitants.

This may sound silly, but around early 2000 I was pondering over writing my our RPG games, and set a rule for myself that if I ever do one, in my games there will be more different characters and more different races. Heck, in my program I even did not hardcode "biological sex types" but made a customizable list of sexes per species lol. And that was long before learning about all the contemporary social discussions (Internet was not much a thing for me until mid-2000ies).

Sorry if this is not directly relevant to the discussion, I just had to say this, because that's what also was bugging me all those years :).
I agree, and I think it's a huge problem when nearly all modern fantasy either fall in the category of "Tolkien derivative" or "Tolkien derivative, but with tons of boobs and gore added into the mix", and I say this as somebody who love LoTR.

It's not only that so many fantasy authors has copied Tolkien, but that they nearly always copy the least good parts of his work, such as an almost all-white cast, tons of men with swords, long lists of made-up names to remember, and the evil armies being full of unfortunate racial stereotypes. Meanwhile, you rarely see the best sides of his work drawn on, such as the great focus on empathy and loyalty, positive masculine role models, the fact that the few women who were in LoTR were really well-written and none of them objectified, and overall all the warfare and battles being balanced by also including many scenes of healing and rebuilding.


KyriakosCH

#338
Imo Tolkien already was rather a step down from the important fantasy writers of his time - for example Lord Dunsany or Arthur Machen. Even Goethe (and other great authors) had written fantasy in the past.
After Tolkien's rise... it would seem he spawned thousands of copycats, who (as usually happens) are worse than him anyway. But in my view he also damaged a part of the fantasy genre, despite making fantasy massively more popular and read.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS91p-vmSf0
This is the Way - A dark allegory. My Twitter!  My Youtube!

Babar

Quote from: Blondbraid on Sat 13/02/2021 15:48:28
Everyone has preferences, but that in itself doesn't objectify the character more, rather, objectification is about distilling someone down to only the things you find attractive to you to the point you can't see them as a full human being anymore.
You have to remember, players doing this regardless MIGHT be a thing, but the more important and problematic aspect is when the author intends for that to be done.
I remember someone did a Batman and Catwoman swap in one of the Arkham games, but this is the best I can still find. Still, it makes it INCREDIBLY obvious what the developer's intent was, in an incredibly hilarious way. There could be an argument made that Catwoman's character is one where she makes use of her sexuality as a weapon, but whether or not that is true, it's DEFINITELY true  that the game devs wanted to provide a "treat" to certain male players:

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