Girl in the Machine - This guy are sick.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Tempting the snake in the Garden of Eden.

Warning! MGS3 spoilers follow!

In 2004, Konami released Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the prequel to its stealth-action Metal Gear series. Snake Eater sets itself apart from the rest of the series by moving the action from urban environments into the heart of the Soviet jungle, requiring players to utilize camouflage and various survival techniques. The game's Cold War era setting also imbues it with a James Bond feel, complete with a kitschy theme song and opening. With every Bond movie, there is also a so-called Bond Girl, and Snake Eater's irritating symbol of sexism is a frisky lady named EVA.

Our pal EVA is a KGB spy working alongside Snake in his mission to destroy the Shagohod, a nuclear-equipped ancestor of the first Metal Gear. She poses as a Russian woman named Tatyana to infiltrate the traitorous Colonel Volgin's forces, feeding Snake information from her position as a mole. She also repeatedly takes her clothes off (guess her boobs need some air), flirts with Snake in literally all of her scenes to the point of sexual harassment, and gets groped by male characters no less than three times over the course of the game. Oh, but she's tough, though! Tough and she wants to do you.

Yes, she's one of those characters: the tired "Beautiful but Deadly" stereotype we're all sick of. EVA fairly jiggles her way from scene to scene, pausing only to unzip her motorcycle onesie down to her crotch for no particular reason, and the more voyeuristic gamer can take advantage of Snake Eater's first person cutscene viewer to join Snake as he repeatedly ogles the goods. I have to admit, I laughed the first time, but does our intrepid hero really have to stare at her tits in every single scene as if they contain the meaning of life?

It's no surprise as well that EVA is boring as all hell. She's a tough chick, blah blah, she rides a motorcycle and can apparently fly a plane as well, she's a super spy with a kickass gun, whatever. In a series known for characters who are interesting (sometimes to a fault -- especially when you're covered in bees!), EVA is predictable and stale. Her lines are generously peppered with double entendres, she's a master of charming any and all foes with her smoldering good looks, and she falls in love with Snake at the end . . . even though she's not supposed to! How shocking.

Unfortunately, things get worse. While oversexed leading ladies are no strangers to all sorts of media, EVA's case is made more disturbing by the sexual violence inflicted on her. While posing as Tatyana, she is repeatedly raped and tortured by the sadistic Colonel Volgin over the course of the game. Fortunately, these scenes are never shown, but Snake does observe a number of scars caused by Volgin during one of EVA's "skip around in my underwear" scenes. Rape is not often addressed in video games, and the way it's presented here is cringe-worthy at best. While the act itself is (thankfully) never sexualized, EVA endures it as part of her mission -- something that no male agent would ever be expected to do. As well, EVA was trained to seduce her foes, a technique that places her in this victim's role intentionally. It's horrifying and sick, and treads dangerously into "She was asking for it" territory.

After all is said and done, she's also a centerfold in a men's magazine the player can obtain in Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops.

Metal Gear Solid 3's female lead, EVA, is one of the worst examples of a female character I can think of. Two-dimensional and stereotyped, she's the Sultry Vixen With a Gun that we've seen thousands of times. Even more problematic is the sexual violence she repeatedly suffers, the effects of which are never even mentioned. I love the Metal Gear series, but EVA's design and presentation severely soured my experience with Snake Eater. I can only hope that her return in MGS4: Guns of the Patriots doesn't make things even worse.

Labels: BomberGirl, Metal Gear, Sexuality, Stealth, Stereotypes, Violence

Posted by BomberGirl
8:08 AM + Link to this post
7 comments

Friday, February 8, 2008

Aggression Toward Video Games

A couple of months ago I talked about my belief that video games are scapegoated by the media as the downfall of our generation. Through KillerBetties I found the blog of a licensed psychologist who agrees with me:

In 1955, the U.S. Senate blasted comic books, deploring their depiction of every horrible thing from murder to cannibalism ... Half a century later, violent video games are the comic books of our day.

Gaskill and Verhaagen are absolutely right to compare comic books in the 1950s to video games today. With every new generation, some new form of entertainment is the source of society's doom and inevitable downfall--ironically, the accusers turn out to be the doomed young generation before. If it's not comic books, it's rock and roll; if not rock and roll, it's movies; and the list goes on.

One frequently cited research article criticizing violent video games includes several studies. One of these studies was a "correlational study" from which the authors concluded, "Playing violent video games often may well cause increases in delinquent behaviors, both aggressive and non-aggressive." However, in a remarkable moment of self-contradiction, they later said that making such causative statements with a correlational study is "risky, at best."

Gaskill and Verhaagen go on to point out that correlational studies are often used quite erroneously to make concrete conclusions. This is because the point of a correlational study is to compare two different occurences and see if they have some sort of relation to eachother. In the case of this aggression and violent video games study, the authors found a correlation between the two--but, now everyone say it together, correlation does not equal causation.

What does this mean? It means that just because two occurrences may correlate together (such as aggression and violent video games), it does not mean that one caused the other to occur in the first place. An example that is particularly close to my heart is the positive correlation between ice cream sales and murders. If one were to follow the same logic that many politicians do concerning video games, one would conclude that buying ice cream makes you more likely to be a murderer. It turns out that there is a third variable that affects these two occurrences--summertime.

In other words, just because aggression and violent video games may correlate does not mean that violent video games cause aggression. Being a Psychology major myself, I've been recently studying aggression and its causes, and according to the American Psychological Association, violent media can have a long-lasting effect on a person only if it is viewed heavily and consistently over a long period of time.

So as long as you're not hooked into Grand Theft Auto six out of seven days of the week, you should be fine.

Labels: In the News, PlasmaRit, Violence

Posted by PlasmaRit
1:10 PM + Link to this post
4 comments

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

A Strictly Female Affliction

In 1995, Cyberdreams published a one-of-a-kind adventure game for the PC that was based on Harlan Ellison's unsettling short story, "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream." The dystopian premise of both is basically the same: an all-powerful supercomputer called AM has taken control of the Third World War and destroyed most of humanity. Only five survivors remain, and they waste away in an underground chamber plagued by immortality of AM's making. Spurred by his hatred of humanity, AM has been torturing the five for 109 years, and this is where the game begins.

The basic structure of the game is this: the player navigates through five "stages" based on the psychological state of each character. The character must outsmart AM's torments by overcoming the challenges within. It's much more complex than that, really, but I'm afraid I don't have time to do the game's depth justice right here.

What I do want to discuss is something that bothered me greatly while playing through this otherwise stellar game. To begin, it isn't surprising that, of the five main characters, only one is a woman.

This is Ellen, whose cage deep underground is a splintering canary yellow. We learn just as she's introduced that she has a paralyzing fear of this color, which the game unfortunately (and repeatedly) describes as driving her to "hysteria." AM consistently focuses Ellen's torture on the color yellow, as we quickly see when we're presented with her stage:

An enormous, solid gold pyramid.

As we navigate the halls of Ellen's psyche, it's her fear of yellow that guides us. What could have possibly caused this unusual phobia? Why, after over a century of confronting the color, does it still inflict such panic?

We uncover the answer when Ellen enters a sarcophagus and finds herself in a very familiar elevator.

There's a piece of yellow clothing on the floor. Much to her horror, Ellen finds that she's locked in the elevator, and the clothing springs to life as an ominous shadow, taunting her, revealing her secret at last. Ready to know what's caused this terror of all things yellow?

She was raped.

To be completely honest, as circuitous as it all seems, I was expecting it. And it makes me sigh.

Rape is a tricky thing to incorporate into any fictive medium. It's violent and ugly and terrible -- and very real. I definitely do not doubt Harlan Ellison's writing prowess, either. However, what makes me uncomfortable about the inclusion of rape in a woman's backstory is that it's such a go-to motivation for fleshing out female characters. She's weak because she was raped; she wants revenge because she was raped; etc., etc. We see it so often (admittedly more in written fiction and comics rather than video games) that it's become cliche.

What's more, it's a strictly female affliction, which serves only to hammer home the cold reality that this is a danger that mostly women have to face.

This isn't cut-and-dried, of course. I'm not calling for an issue as tough and universal as rape to be excised from all of fiction. We also have to consider that the original short story was written in the sixties, and that rape is very rarely -- if ever -- dealt with in video games. However, in this particular case, Ellen is the only woman of five vastly differing characters, and, in a game as beautifully written and richly-detailed as this one, it's disappointing to say the very least.

Of Ellen's fellow prisoners, a former Nazi scientist must face the horror of his own work and a man whose wife was locked up in an insane asylum has to deal with his guilt. These are just two of the varying backstories that we come across. And we've seen this over and over: male characters with branching personalities and motivations are a sharp contrast to their more static or cliched female fellows. This is a much more general but just as prevalent affliction. If female characters were granted the same depth and diversity, it would be another step closer to a less patriarchal culture.

"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" is an intricate game that'll both disturb and challenge you. Its puzzles and narrative are what most adventure games wish they could offer, and if you can dig up a copy, I highly recommend it despite its flaws.

Labels: Adventure, BomberGirl, Violence

Posted by BomberGirl
10:15 AM + Link to this post
0 comments

Monday, June 4, 2007

Hookers on Parade

Possible Silent Hill 4 spoilers! You've been warned.

So, I'm here today to talk about one of many long-time conventions of Survival Horror games: the alternate costume. Specifically, let's dive into those of the amazing Silent Hill series.

The first Silent Hill game to implement alternate costumes was Silent Hill 3 with Heather Mason's formidable slew of T-shirts, whose codes you could gather throughout subsequent play-throughs of the game as well as from different gaming magazines. Among them is my favorite, this kick-ass design from the now-defunct GMR magazine:

Silent Hill 4, the oft-referred "black sheep" of the series, features alternate costumes as well, although in a, erm, slightly different manner:

Why don't we talk about the difference here?

First of all, it's important to note that the SH4 costumes are only available for these two characters, Cynthia and Eileen respectively, and, as opposed to the twenty-eight choices you have in SH3, these are the only options you have: dominatrix for Cynthia and sexy nurse for Eileen.

Now, I have no problem with the sexy sexy nature of these costumes. In theory, it adds a touch of humor to the game that pervades the entire series (Exhibit A). However, in SH3 you were only able to dress up Heather, the single playable character, as opposed to, oh, gussying up creepy villainess Claudia in a rubber unitard and fishnet stockings. In SH4, protagonist Harry receives no alternate costumes at all, and the option to slap one of these on our lovable Walter Sullivan is absent as well.

So, our first problem is that only the female characters receive this extra treatment. And their meager options are what can only be deemed "stripper outfits." It transforms SH4 from a tense, psychological experience to a rendered polygon jiggle-fest in ways that not even Heather's Pretty Magical Girl outfit ever managed.

The game's Survival Horror tag obviously warrants buckets of blood and violence. Here's where things for our pals Cynthia and Eileen get even more problematic. Their sexy new costumes provide for scenes where they look exactly like Dead Hookers on Parade.

The sexualization of the poses, highlighted by the stripper duds, puts a titillating gloss on what should only be seen as alarming and horrifying. It's also important to note the striking difference between Walter's attacks on Cynthia and Eileen and those of their male counterparts. While all are similarly graphic, Cynthia and Eileen's are far less disfiguring (if at all), allowing them to, of course, stay nice and pretty (as they're blinking through all that blood). Compare Richard Braintree's huge bulging forehead veins to Eileen's ketchup-stained face. It looks like she'd be A-OK with a sheaf of napkins and a mirror.

The breakdown is, in all Survival Horror games, as with many horror films, every character is fair game for predators, but the "girls" must ALWAYS be sexy, even in their death throes. The treatment of these characters exudes a desperate attempt for male control over the female body. While I have no problem with characters in a Survival Horror game getting attacked or killed while just happening to be female, the tendency to twist the violence against them in a way that's never done to male characters is nothing less than misogynistic, particularly when it's given a sexual spin. Add a couple of hooker outfits to the mix and things get even more fun.

Right. Have fun, ladies.

(Thanks to Zone of the Gamers for the SH screens.)

Labels: BomberGirl, Sexuality, Silent Hill, Survival Horror, Violence