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Author Topic: Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'  (Read 309431 times)

Max White

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #1815 on: June 06, 2013, 02:52:45 am »

Killing off the only homosexual character is similar to sparing the only white character.  In both cases a character's fate is correlated with a demographic.  Not absurd at all.
Because correlation = causation, right? If the gay guy dies it is because he is gay. If the female character is a side character it is because she is female. If the murderer is Islamic, it is because he is Islamic.
Now in all of the above, sometimes that is true. Sometimes the network decides they can't have a gay character and kills him off, and this is wrong, but that doesn't mean you can just assume this is always the motivation and that the characters fate is in fact tied to their demographic. That is, in fact, absurd!

If all the black characters die and nobody else does, you have a much stronger pattern.

Neonivek

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #1816 on: June 06, 2013, 02:55:12 am »

Heck in Anime where the female character's are often depowered, removed from the plot, or what have you. It isn't so much that they are female but rather that both the author and the audience (being male) are less interested in them.

So it is linked to the fact that the character is female, but it is an indirect cause.

Doesn't quite make me hate it any less. I hate when characters are thrown aside unresolved.
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Reelya

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #1817 on: June 06, 2013, 02:58:46 am »

Killing off the only homosexual character is similar to sparing the only white character.  In both cases a character's fate is correlated with a demographic.  Not absurd at all.

It's a symptom, and not the cause. Even Palsch's link (this one) makes the case that the reason this happens is because the minority characters are side characters, like black characters, they're put in there to "improve diversity". And (according to palsch's link) side characters have a habit of being killed off to propel the storyline of the protagonist. Here, we have the exact same phenomena that Anita said was "because they're female", but it's applied to gay men and non-white men. Heck, even white men get killed off in large numbers in this way to propel the protagonists storyline. So, you can see minority or female side characters being killed off has nothing to do with their gender, and everything to do with just being side characters, and attempts to improve "diversity" coupled with conservatism with the straight/white/male lead as the default option.

Lack of diversity of protagonists is the problem that all the other problems flow from.
« Last Edit: June 06, 2013, 03:12:24 am by Reelya »
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Max White

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #1818 on: June 06, 2013, 02:59:18 am »

Neonivek one day you and I are going to have to find something we strongly disagree on. I need to know if I like your arguments because they are well put together or if I am just bias because for the most part we can agree.

Soadreqm

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #1819 on: June 06, 2013, 04:17:12 am »

[Twilight is] the most obvious example of a best-selling book made into a series of successful films with a total franchise value well in excess of $5 billion which also happens to romanticise a relationship that is, facially, an abusive one.

I'm not entirely sure what a better example would be in this case.

As for measures taken against it, how about public criticism? You know, the sort of thing that happens around the internet. Ana Mardoll has over a hundred posts doing a page-by-page deconstruction and talking about related issues. At a certain level you can use such public examples as effective teaching tools, as examples of what and why things are problematic. Admittedly doing it in the face of rabid fandom can be tricky... but it's still worthwhile.

Something that isn't reviled for its unreasonable portrayal of relationships would be good. Something like that would actually show that people buy into these narratives. Which Twilight really doesn't. Twilight does the opposite of that. Twilight is an example of people NOT accepting a narrative. Except the teenage girls, of course, but I think they're excused, being teenage.

I mean, I can't publicly criticise Twilight. Criticising it is too mainstream. It'd be like joining a lynch mob. I've been thinking of reading it and then trying to find something nice to say about it, just to be contrary. :P

Those paragraphs are directly related to the quote right before them. They are about how people treat domestic violence claims with increased scepticism when they don't fit their personal narratives about what domestic violence looks like. So if they have a narrow definition, or a definition that includes justifications or excuses ('she wanted it', 'she pushed him to it', 'she deserved it', etc) then they are more likely to find reasons to dismiss justified complaints.

The problem with the games is that they feed into those justification/excuse narratives. Maybe not deliberately or explicitly, but the language and actions are in line with those abuse narratives. The woman literally saying it's not the man's fault and forgiving him for the violence. The woman who loses her mind and has to be violently brought back to her senses. These are near stock domestic violence stories.

Are they really? Because the stock domestic violence story I know is that the man is always the offending party, and he is abusing the woman because he is evil and she is too weak and powerless to stop him. You keep saying that society at large blames women, but I haven't noticed any evidence towards this. The statistics linked by Reelya suggest the opposite. Did I miss some links you posted in pages past or something?

Or are you looking at this from the point of view of the abuser? "Loses her mind and has to be violently bought back to her senses" sounds like the kind of flimsy excuse a person might make to justify his own violence. I don't see why that matters, though, or is exclusive to women. People do that every time they attack anything. I do not think this is a learned behaviour at all.
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Vattic

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #1820 on: June 06, 2013, 04:36:13 am »

It's the stories people tell, true or not, and the stories people carry in their heads into those situations. The models they fit events to, whether accurate or not. Listen to a group of guys in a workplace or bar discussing abuse allegations from news stories. Listen to how defence lawyers or magistrates describe abusive relationships. They are fitting the events into a particular narrative, whether they mean to or not. It's nearly universal when talking about these things.
Are they really? Because the stock domestic violence story I know is that the man is always the offending party, and he is abusing the woman because he is evil and she is too weak and powerless to stop him. You keep saying that society at large blames women, but I haven't noticed any evidence towards this. The statistics linked by Reelya suggest the opposite. Did I miss some links you posted in pages past or something?

I have to agree with Soadreqm here. The night shift team where I work is all men currently and if the topic of male on female domestic violence comes up a number of them like to say that if they knew a guy who was beating their partner they'd go around and break his legs. I can only think of one instance where a colleague excused domestic violence and that wasn't really domestic violence in the sense that there was a clear victim and aggressor; Their marriage was falling apart and near the end snide comments would lead to one slapping the other.
« Last Edit: June 06, 2013, 04:51:01 am by Vattic »
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Max White

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #1821 on: June 06, 2013, 04:48:29 am »

Are we going to do a domestic violence derail?Ok then.
So two common problems in Australian society: Domestic violence and male depression. To help combat male depression, services like Beyond Blue and Mensline have been set up that offer counseling and such, and they very quickly found that one of the biggest problems that depressed men had was controlling their anger. This led to domestic violence. These men then felt bad about how they had treated their spouse, making their depression even worse. There are cases of men committing suicide because they felt so bad about what they did to their wives and such.
Still, those that sought out help and were given methods to deal with their depression felt a lot better and were, for the most part, able to stop their domestic abuse. Demonizing men and making them seem like monsters for hurting their wives only ever made some men feel like monsters, and this only made the problem worse. The attitude that "a number of them like to say that if they knew a guy who was beating their partner they'd go around and break his legs" might seem heroic, but it doesn't help. Dealing with domestic violence by treating it as something that affects both men and women negatively, however, does.

Hurting anybody is a crime, and should be treated as such, but getting all emotional about the issue and ostracizing offenders doesn't help, it only makes people less willing to look for the help they need. And perhaps if we take some of the stigma out of domestic violence and try to understand the cause, we will also become more understanding of men who are being beaten by women instead of taking it as a sign of weakness.

Neonivek

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #1822 on: June 06, 2013, 04:51:08 am »

Quote
getting all emotional about the issue and ostracizing offenders doesn't help, it only makes people less willing to look for the help they need. And perhaps if we take some of the stigma out of domestic violence and try to understand the cause

That is true with so many things, but the barrier to understanding is that people don't want to understand they just want to "punish bad people".
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Vattic

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #1823 on: June 06, 2013, 04:53:25 am »

I wasn't saying it sounded heroic. I was just saying that I had listened to groups of guys at work and hadn't found what palsch suggested I would. I actually find it uncomfortable listening to them talk at length about hurting anybody and it's something they unfortunately love talking about.
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Rolan7

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #1824 on: June 06, 2013, 09:23:23 am »

Killing off the only homosexual character is similar to sparing the only white character.  In both cases a character's fate is correlated with a demographic.  Not absurd at all.
Because correlation = causation, right? If the gay guy dies it is because he is gay. If the female character is a side character it is because she is female. If the murderer is Islamic, it is because he is Islamic.
Now in all of the above, sometimes that is true. Sometimes the network decides they can't have a gay character and kills him off, and this is wrong, but that doesn't mean you can just assume this is always the motivation and that the characters fate is in fact tied to their demographic. That is, in fact, absurd!

If all the black characters die and nobody else does, you have a much stronger pattern.

No, I said the two situations were comparable.  In both cases the fate of a single character is correlated with their demographic.  It wasn't a "reductio ad absurdum" like you claimed.

I said "correlation" for a reason.  I specifically didn't say causation.  I knew that if did claim that homosexuals were so often killed off because of them being homosexual, some chucklefuck would jump in with "correlation doesn't imply causation".  So I didn't say it.  So you put the words in my mouth.  Fine, I'm apparently not needed here, you can have me say whatever you want.  I'm gone.
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Max White

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #1825 on: June 06, 2013, 09:34:07 am »

Except that is wrong because while in the first example a single character dies on, in the second example many characters die off.

Rolan7

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #1826 on: June 06, 2013, 09:52:54 am »

In some types of movies there's only one survivor.  In other types of movies only 1-2 people die.

In both cases one or two people have a different fate from the rest.  If they also have a different race or orientation than the rest of the cast, the two situations are very comparable.

Anyway, have fun talking to yourself.  I won't have a discussion with anyone who misstates my position and won't even apologize or take it back.  It's completely unproductive and deeply offensive.
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Max White

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #1827 on: June 06, 2013, 10:04:35 am »

Except you will find that usually here are multiple white characters, so it has far less to do with being white and a lot more to do with being the protagonist. They aren't killing off people of a certain race, they are killing off side characters. As such, saying it is offensive to kill off black characters doesn't address the problem, you should be arguing that black people should be allowed to be the protagonist. If you can't correctly identify the problem, you will never find a valid solution.
You can't say there is any correlation between being white and surviving, because plenty of white characters die, that is why I assumed you were making even a hint of sense and saying that the fate of the black characters was linked to their race...

Look at game of thrones for example. Using your logic Renly shouldn't have been killed off because he is gay and in a broader social context killing the gay guy is bad! Except it is game of fucking thrones. Everybody dies, and those that don't wish they had. Horror movies are much the same, everybody dies except the protagonist.

Saying "sparing the only white character", and those are your exact words, implies there is only one white character in an otherwise black cast and they all die except the sole heroic white guy. Can you see how that is taking things into the point of being absurd? Movies aren't like that. It doesn't happen. If you find a movie like that, chances are I will be calling it racist, but it isn't common.

Leafsnail

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #1828 on: June 06, 2013, 10:26:26 am »

I don't know, it could work if it was context with her delving deeper into the subject matter. Trying to link the psychology of real life violence against women to the mannerisms and justifications inside the game.

But I guess that is the thing. These videos aren't very deep, in fact they so lightly skim the surface one could say they are shallow.

Which would be alright if these videos were meant to be an exploration and thus it was up to the viewer to make up their mind, but there is a clear argument and a clear goal of her examples.

I am trying to grasp the overall fundamental problem with the two videos.
I agree.  I think the fundamental problem is the way it attempts to use tropes as a form of analysis.  I think tropes only really work for analysing really terribly written stories (think bad anime) in which the writers just sortof threw together a set of clichés.  It flounders badly if anything with even the slightest depth is attempted, because you really need analysis that cuts deeper than just "This thing occurs in a lot of games".
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palsch

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #1829 on: June 06, 2013, 10:43:37 am »

Sorry everyone but I'm going to have to ignore a lot of stuff I'm afraid. Just not got the time for everything here and writing these posts isn't exactly fun for me. If anyone actually thinks a statement I didn't address needs a response feel free to ask for one. I'm going to start with the simple parts first.

Something that isn't reviled for its unreasonable portrayal of relationships would be good. Something like that would actually show that people buy into these narratives. Which Twilight really doesn't. Twilight does the opposite of that. Twilight is an example of people NOT accepting a narrative. Except the teenage girls, of course, but I think they're excused, being teenage.

For starters, a $5 billion dollar franchise is obviously not universally reviled. It has become one of the most widely successful and recognised romance stories of the last decade at least.

Next, the main reasons it is reviled rarely have to do with the relationship depicted, at least not outside certain (largely feminist) circles. Ana has a post about this topic. A lot of the attacks on Twilight are more about it being a book for women and girls. The language used to criticise it is often openly misogynistic and sexist. You see the same thing with Fifty Shades of Gray, complaining it is just porn for women or glorified fan-fic (both kinda true) but ignoring the horrible misrepresentation of BDSM/kink and the regressive elements (including, again, abusive ones).

Finally, the idea that it doesn't matter because it's only popular with teenage girls is so much bullshit. Teenage girls are among those most at risk from abusive relationships and those most open to relationship narratives in this sense. Their models of what a romantic relationship should or does look like are still forming. They are the absolute last audience you want to paint abuse as romance for.

And for context, I want to refer again to Anita's own reference link, "The normalization of violence in heterosexual romantic relationships: Women's narratives of love and violence". I think that reading that should help greatly with understanding what is meant by abusive narratives and their effects on women in this context.
Read the name of that article you linked. What does it say? "Why does the gay character always have to die", now that sounds a little different to what you are saying, that the gay character isn't allowed to die. Once again, when there is a mandate that the gay guy must die, it is offensive, when it just happens because that is how it happened then so be it. A homosexual character has the same rights to an interesting story as any other character, including a death.
I know I linked to the second of three pages there by accident, but please try reading and understanding the entire article that I linked to with the words understand the context. Notably on page 3;
Quote
But to all those writers who justify the deaths of their gay characters with the argument that “it’s all about character and story”: you yourself are not seeing the whole story.

Sure, in the particular storyline of any given show, the gay guy might have to die. But that show exists in a larger cultural context, one that includes this longstanding writers’ trope of the Dead Gay Guy, and one that includes almost no leading gay characters. Indeed, of the many various "crime" franchises, only a single show, Law & Order: SVU, has a regular gay character – a minor one who didn’t come out until eight years into the show’s run

The argument is often made that, “If gay viewers want gay characters to be treated equally on television, they have to accept that sometimes bad things will happen to them.”

But that’s precisely the point: as long as there are no leading gay characters, gay characters aren’t being treated equally. We’re getting all of the trauma and tragedy of the gay death (and the vitriol directed at the gay villain), but almost none of the pleasure of the gay leading man.

And just as with racial minorities, it’s making all gay people seem less powerful, more likely to be a “victim,” than straight people. We never get to be Spartacus, the guy who makes it to the end of the story, the guy who ends up changing the world.

There used to be a similar cliché in horror movies where it seemed like the black supporting character always had to die – for exactly the same reasons that gay characters now so often die. That’s changed somewhat – in part, because the cliché was so widely mocked.
Also please try responding to what I write and you quote. You say it's about the gay characters being "allowed to die" when I said, and you quoted, "As such if you are trying to write a story that is accessible to gay people you probably want to think twice before shoving your only gay character into a fridge. At least if you are going to do it understand the context and why it is very likely to piss a lot of people off." Thinking twice and understanding what you are doing is different from not being "allowed" to do something.

I think this is about as clear a summary of the whole debate as exists so far.

Also, Max, I can't really engage with what you are claiming that Anita claims simply because I don't understand where your assumptions are coming from. You are making wild leaps of logic about what she claims that simply don't follow from the video (or text). You are flat out ignoring a lot of what she says and coming from a completely different understanding of her goals to mine. If you could explain what you think she is trying to achieve that would be a helpful starting point so we could start talking about the same things again.

And on that note;
I'm disputing the way Anita couches her arguments, by painting only a lopsided picture of reality, and then giving a just-so explanation of why it occurs, she's not helping with solutions. Which is why things like the domestic violence abuse rate being pretty much exactly the same amongst lesbians as straight couples is a telling point. She's peddling a simplistic "patriarchy created every problem" model, which is way too simplistic. Since it doesn't address why things actually happen in real life, it's not going to solve those the problems.
The problem here is you are assuming she is doing something she isn't really doing. At no point is she saying "patriarchy created every problem" or domestic violence is solely about men beating women. She is saying that men beating women is a problem and that this particular set of narratives contribute to that problem.

Remember that her focus here is on tropes about women in video games. It's not about domestic violence in general or anything along those lines. Explaining the negative narratives expressed with regards to domestic violence is well within the scope of the video. Talking about the wide causes and issues with regards to domestic violence isn't.
I have to agree with Soadreqm here. The night shift team where I work is all men currently and if the topic of male on female domestic violence comes up a number of them like to say that if they knew a guy who was beating their partner they'd go around and break his legs. I can only think of one instance where a colleague excused domestic violence and that wasn't really domestic violence in the sense that there was a clear victim and aggressor; Their marriage was falling apart and near the end snide comments would lead to one slapping the other.
Honestly, this doesn't sound far off what I was thinking of. People are opposed to domestic violence in the abstract, because we have mental models of domestic violence which is bad and easy to condemn and our abstract discussions don't usually go outside those models.

But specific cases? Unless they do fit into one of those models we are less likely to criticise them. The examples that crop up in the real world are messy and so harder to condemn. And we are usually happy to let them be messy, especially if they involve people we know, like and/or respect being painted in a bad way.

In fact, going back to Soadrqm;
Are they really? Because the stock domestic violence story I know is that the man is always the offending party, and he is abusing the woman because he is evil and she is too weak and powerless to stop him.
This in itself offers a social reluctance to recognise abuse when it is conducted by men we don't think of as evil, or to women we don't see as weak and powerless. So we try to fit those abusers and victims into other narratives, often involving victim blaming or making excuses.

Recognising that abuse happens in different forms and ways and not just the narrow narratives that are easy to accept is an important part of this. But discouraging harmful narratives that make abuse easier to ignore or go any distance at all in excusing it is also important.
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