DISCLAIMER: I KNOW ITS NOT LONG ENOUGH BUT THIS IS ALL I HAVE SO FAR. I HAVE ALSO INCLUDED THE INTERVIEW WITH KAVITA.

The representation of women in video games today is a popular topic which can be applied to various theories. The expression of gender fluidity within today’s society suggests that there is a growing interest demonstrated by women in the stereotypical boyish video games. The hypothesis that gender is fluid and able to choose whatever extent of sex it conforms to thus enabling gender to be more personal than conventional to the individual. For example, not limiting and associating facial hair with males. This explores the gender fluidity of gender that is still being accepted today. “Female characters now commonplace considering the increased market share of female gamers. Tomb Raider franchise was hailed by the market as the first serious action/adventure game to feature a female charcater for female gamers.”Evidence of the acceptance of gender fluidity, is the encouragement and availability of gender ambiguity in game consoles, such as the Nintendo wii mii creator, where ones gender may remain ambiguous as the features and traits apply for both sexes when creating a character. This allows the individual to experiment with the conventional features that symbolise a particular sex with society as well as appear unisex/cross gender, through Henry Jenkins convergence culture.

 However, according to Bell Hook’s theory it has been suggested that female characters in video games are marginalised thus questioning a woman’s place in everyday society. The ‘Virgin Whore dichotomy’ is the idea where a woman can only be viewed as either a virgin; the idealised pure woman or the Whore, being the fallen women in society’s eyes. These two dominant representations of femininity are the complete opposite of ‘Gender fluidity’.

 With specific to this characters such as ‘Princess Peach’ from ‘Super Mario’ can be seen as the representative of the virginal character that rarely ever makes an appearance throughout the whole duration of the game. Despite her few appearances, she takes on the role of the stereotypical damsel in distress thus emphasising male domination as well as portraying women as the needy gender. Moreover ‘Princess Peach’ can be viewed as a prime example of objectifying women through her treatment as a trophy at the end of the game once the antagonist has been defeated. This outcasts women’s importance in video games by treating them as other thus conveys them as lack characters with no depth or substance. ‘Princess Peach’ is nothing more that proof of victory according to Todorov’s narrative theory.

“Under representation of women show how males are privileged in games. There were no more aliens or creatures represented than females, which can lead one to believe females are less important that non-existent creatures.”

Mulvey’s theory of the ‘Male Gaze’ explains how the camera can become masculine and set up various perspectives that objectify women thus positioning male gamers as the voyeur. Women in the media, particularly in gaming are highly objectified as they are creations of men by men with dominantly whorish “go go girl” costumes. This ill-use of these women’s placements in these video games is also highly fetishised through the violent encounter between a woman and a physically stronger man. This provides the gamer with a sense of superiority whilst demeaning women.

 The ‘Male Gaze’ can be applied to Alisa Bonconovitch from Tekken is a Russian man made android with the outer appearance of a young, perversely pure girl. Her appearance can be seen as quite ambiguous to her given characteristics as her innocent face is contradictory to her visibly provocative body with hints of youth. The white flowers in her hair could be read as symbolic to innocence however, her stockings suggests otherwise. Her interesting apparel below the waist is quite reminiscent to burlesque/fetish wear.  Not only have the creators of Tekken created a misleading character by mixing innocence with raunchiness but they have provided men with yet another objectified character within gaming. Thus serving a sense of paraphillia, this is emphasised through the uniform like qualities of her costume. Her A-line styled skirt is quite similar to the school skirts worn in Japan as well as the collars and cuffs of a white shirt which is also similar to uniform in addition to the signature playboy bunny costume.  Alisa fits a stereotypical subject of the school girl/barely legal fetish. She is both voyeuristic and fetishist. Moreover, the fact that she is an android plays a huge part in her representation thus objectifying women, because she is man made this suggests that she was made by men for men, as with the few Tekken female characters. However, she is a projection of the creation behind… After playing as Alisa in the arcade an observation was made that every time she performs a move/combo her skirt blows up exposing her bloomers which can also be associated with childhood. Although she breaks the expectation set by the lack category set by Bell Hooks through her substance and purpose, it can be argued that she serves all the wrong purposes in gaming thus being classed as a sexual object that is made and controlled by man only catering to their fetishes as she is a highly fetishised character that resemble the barely legal type of woman.

“Video games are strictly the domain of children and teens, as opposed to adults; however, the Entertainment software Association (2006) found that 69% of gamers were over the age of 18 and that more women over 18 (30%) played than boys under 17” Lara croft can be seen as the ideal representative for women empowerment as she embodies a strong, brave persona similar to Indiana Jones. Though she is represented as quite an attractive, idealised female she has a tough exterior fused with athletic meets curvy physique. She can be seen a prime example of Laura Mulvey’s male gaze in gaming. Her lack of clothing exposes her body thus casting out the young gamers which questions the importance of age regulation in the game maker’s eyes.

INTERVIEW:

Dear O’Shaya 

My sincere apologies for the slow reply. I am in the middle of a big launch on the 1st of March of a new game. 

Firstly I am very impressed with you chosen topic I am sure it is proving really interesting and I would love to read the final report.  

Part of my delay in my response is because I have been considering my response. You ask a tough question. 

I been playing computer games  for 30 years and my first observation would be that games appeal to wider range of men than women and although I haven’t seen any recent statistics that has been the case historically. 

Secondly technical disciplines such as programming seems to appeal to men rather than women and this is a still an issue today. When women embark on programming as a job because of other soft skills they have they move to being project managers etc away from technology. This means for gaming companies the creative ideas from women are limited.  

In terms of Madam Samurai which is a comic book (you can find it online) we are working towards a series of games and I feel the following will make will aid (not hinder) the representation of women ;

            – the management team is an all women team 

            – the main protagonist is a women   

            – she is shown a skilled master and in full control

            – as a transmedia project (book and game) there is an opportunity to explore different angles of representation. Problem solving as well as classic flighting games.      

I am sorry for the delay. I hope this is of some help.

With kind regards

Kavita 

On 4 Feb 2011, at 20:50, Sakura 桜 Dawkins wrote:

Hi Kavita,
For my media coursework I have chosen to base my investigation on the representation of women in video games. Mr Mitchell briefed me on your job description and we thought that it would be really interesting if I interviewed you for my media coursework. 

In my essay I am focusing on women in games such as: Tekken and Tomb Raider. These games are generally male dominated. My essay title is ‘To what extent does the representation of women in video games marginalise, objectify and disempower female gamers? With specific reference to Princess Peach, Lara Croft and the girls of Tekken 5.‘ 

If you have any thoughts on this topic please share.

Assuming that gaming has been and often still is a primarily male dominated platform, what do you think about the stereotypical representations of women?

In your work on the idea for a computer game platform for a female samurai, what can be done to make this a representation of women for women rather than men?

Thank you, 

O’Shaya

VS

other women in gaming:

GTA

WET

Beatnik, a media stereotype of the 1950s and early 1960s, was a synthesis of the more superficial aspects of the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s into violent film images, a cartoonish misrepresentation of the real-life people and spiritual aspects in Jack Kerouac’s autobiographical fiction. Kerouac spoke out against this misdirected detour from his original concept.

What/who are they rebelling against?  what are they trying to achieve?

The Beatniks were nonconformists, and there was really no organization nor leader to their cause. It started as a literary movement centered around the novels of Jack Kerouac and poet Allen Ginsberg. The “beat” life evolved into what was called a bohemian lifestyle. The center of the beatnik culture was New York’s Greenwich Village, San Francisco’s North Beach, and Venice, California. Beats rebelled against the intellectual erosion of the 1950s. They opted to avoid society and took no interest in politics, public life, or mainstream employment. They mocked America’s love of materialism by wearing t-shirts and khaki trousers. They lived in sparsely furnished “pads,” named because of the mattress on the floor. The Beats were highly intellectual, discovering obscure writers on all subjects, and embracing Zen Buddhism. Their music was jazz and they lived together without marriage.

Do they have any distinctive fashions/music/lifestyle choices?

Yes. The Betaniks were into Jazz music and got most of their slang such as: “Daddy O” from the artists lyrics. form fitting black turtleneck. Beatniks often read Nietzsche and appreciated his nihilistic views. Somber black clothing helped them express this ideal. They also wore solid black leggings, minimal jewelry and berets to complete the look.

How are they/have they been represented in the media?  Give examples across the platforms.

• An Extremely Goofy Movie (Disney)-Beret Girl, a female “beatnik” college student, who becomes romantically involved with P.J.
• A sensationalist Hollywood interpretation, The Beat Generation (1959), made an association of the movement with crime and violence, as did The Beatniks (1960). The notion of violence or other criminality possibly arose because hardcore outlaws and criminals were popularly portrayed as using many of the same jive terms in their speech, and this distortion could also be seen in popular TV shows with regard to hippies a few years later.
• In the television cartoon “Doug“, Judy Funnie, Doug’s older sister, is characterised as a beatnik.

What do theorists have to say ablout them?

COUNTACULTURE

(or the emergence of (anti)civilisation)

Hippy? Punk? Beatnik? Goth? Zippy? Rasta? Crusty Raver?

‘There is only one Counterculture and it’s a Dionysian Movement’ Jack Kerouac,
when asked about the relation between the Beat Generation and the Hippies.

Jack Kerouac probably learnt that line from William Burroughs, who introduced
him to the notion of the Dionysian (see theory page), Burroughs of course can
also be regarded as the father of modern counterculture, at least as a strategy.

 Stereotype

“Beat Generation” sold books, sold black turtleneck sweaters and bongos, berets and dark glasses, sold a way of life that seemed like dangerous fun—thus to be either condemned or imitated. Suburban couples could have beatnik parties on Saturday nights and drink too much and fondle each other’s wives.

Pictures

Music artists such as  -  Dave Brubeck

Example of peotry: 

Dig this Daddio:

hello
who or hello a ours. the sure must the with it began! see the
likes of thee, and oh! The smell, the smell! Why? I never sinned. Lo
here comes the paunchy Cap’n Kirk–Klingons hide your wives away! In
this I’ve found, one knee less skinned. thirteen colonies love is
chemistry, sex is physics, kinkyness is engineering Thusnelda, thou dost
make me sick, orbs of destiny evenings of peculiarity Have So that you may spew

Edd from Ed,Edd n Eddy can be seen as a “genderless” character due to the confusion that consumers face when trying to come to with his gender. It has now been made clear to me along with everyone else. Although, I had always faced debates in the playground, arguing whether or not Edd was male or female. I always argued that he could be both :p

Although, Edd hangs around with boys and takes part in the conventional boy activities, he has many girl traits such as; being a neat freak, delicated voice, focused.

• Take dominant iconography e.g Union Jack and make it into something of their own.
• Groups of people who refuse to conform to society
• Subculture v. Society
• Media theorist
• Known for his influential book in subcultural : THE MEANING OF STYLE 1979
• Saw youth cultures in terms of a dialogue between Black and White youth
• Argues that punk emerged as a mainly white style when Black youth became more separatist in the 1970s in response to discrimination in British society.
• he defined subculture as bringing together like minded individuals

Richard Dyer

• He was an active and influential figure in the English Gay Liberation Front and regularly contributed to the journal Gay Left
• The first gay cinema event at the National Film Theatre was organised by Dyer in 1977
• He developed the idea that the viewers’ perception of a film is heavily influenced by the perceived of its stars, and that publicity materials and reviews determine the way that audiences experience the film.
• He emphasised the gay sensibility of the film, analysing the source of this impression in a way that reached beyond the popular assumption that this flowed from the film’s association with Noël Coward as its scriptwriter.

Slash Fiction

• Also known as same sex romance
• written mostly by women
• Fan fiction about same sex romance
• any two fictional characters
• evolved from homo fans Star Trek
• fanbase for homosexuals who believed they were underrepresented and created a fictitous world where the could be through fictional characters

Gelder identified six key ways in which subcultures can be understood:

1. through their often negative relations to work (as ‘idle’, ‘parasitic’, at play or at leisure, etc.);
2. through their negative or ambivalent relation to class (since subcultures are not ‘class-conscious’ and don’t conform to traditional class definitions);
3. through their association with territory (the ‘street’, the ‘hood, the club, etc.), rather than property;
4. through their movement out of the home and into non-domestic forms of belonging (i.e. social groups other than the family);
5. through their stylistic ties to excess and exaggeration (with some exceptions);
6. through their refusal of the banalities of ordinary life and massification.^[4]

http://www.extrememediastudies.org/extreme_media/1_navigating/pdf/navigating_jenkins_convergence.pdf

Who  is Henry Jenkins?    

Henry Jenkins is an American media scholar and currently a Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts, a joint professorship at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Convergence culture

The Convergence Culture Consortium (C3) explores the ways the business landscape is changing in response to the growing integration of content and brands across media platforms and the increasingly prominent roles that consumers are playing in shaping the flow of media. C3 connects researchers and thinkers from MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program with companies looking to understand new strategies for doing business in a converging media environment. The consortium provides insights into new ways to relate to consumers, manage brands, and develop engaging experiences, strategies to cut through an increasingly cluttered media environment and benefit from emerging cultural and technological trends.    

Participatory culture

Participatory culture is a neologism in reference of, but opposite to a Consumer culture — in other words a culture in which private persons (the public) do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers (prosumers). The term is most often applied to the production or creation of some type of published media. Recent advances in technologies (mostly personal computers and the Internet) have enabled private persons to create and publish such media, usually through the Internet. This new culture as it relates to the Internet has been described as Web 2.0. In participatory culture “young people creatively respond to a plethora of electronic signals and cultural commodities in ways that surprise their makers, finding meanings and identities never meant to be there and defying simple nostrums that bewail the manipulation or passivity of “consumers.

Collective intelligence

A male cleaner cleaning a hall

Close up shot of shoes

Goes in to janitors closet and closes the door behind him …we see a close up of his face

OR

He removes the top of his overalls exposing his chest and abs

Close up shots of his face, butt,biting lip,shoulders

He climbs onto a witheld surface and starts to bounce and says

“They’re so soft” in a deep breathy voice. “I just wanna…”

The door opens and a co worker says “Bonna, what are you doing?”

Awkward silence. The cleaner

soundtrack: Calvin harris – Girls

Gender Trouble

A significant yet sometimes overlooked part of Butler’s argument concerns the role of sex in the construction of “natural” or coherent gender and sexuality. Butler explicitly challenges biological accounts of binary sex, reconceiving the sexed body as itself culturally constructed by regulative discourse. The supposed obviousness of sex as a natural biological fact attests to how deeply its production in discourse is concealed. The sexed body, once established as a “natural” and unquestioned “fact,” is the alibi for constructions of gender and sexuality, unavoidably more cultural in their appearance, which can purport to be the just-as-natural expressions or consequences of a more fundamental sex. On Butler’s account, it is on the basis of the construction of natural binary sex that binary gender and heterosexuality are likewise constructed as natural. In this way, Butler claims that without a critique of sex as produced by discourse, the sex/gender distinction as a feminist strategy for contesting constructions of binary asymmetric gender and compulsory heterosexuality will be ineffective.

The concept of gender performativity is at the core of Butler’s work. It extends beyond the doing of gender and can be understood as a full-fledged theory of subjectivity. Indeed, if her most recent books have shifted focus away from gender, they still treat performativity as theoretically central.

Media offers men and women a range of scripts for gender roles,which audiences interpret and perform in everyday life.

Examples :

David Gauntlett (Theorist)

Response:

Ivan Illinch

The quote by Ivan Illinch is able to motivate the optimists by presenting the idea that the world can be  reshaped through the use of various tools used in everyday life. In conjunction, David Gauntlett’s theory is able to restore this idea and transform our traditional “sit down” culture into the ever growing “make and do” culture. This also encourages humans (the masses) natural, individual creativity and explains the positive effects of making something rather than having something made for you. Gauntlett also highlights the fast expanding New media and the ….to be continued

I have chosen La Tortura by Shakira. To view the video click here

The song tells a story of a woman who has been emotionally tortured as a result of her boyfriend leaving her for another woman. He apologises but she embarrasses him by saying she will not shed a tear of him.

Who is being represented?

• Young single/ independent? women
• Weak lustful man who is unable to move on
• Powerful women (holding knife,he feeds her the chinese food)
• women being sexually objectified (covered in black paint)

Technical aspects:

• Codes and conventions of a music video

-music

- editing /camera shots

-dance routine

Theories to be applied:

• Male Gaze
• Objectification
• Fetishism

Dominant ideology: