Tekanji Ties Game Ads and Raunch Culture
Tekanji has treated us today with the final installment of her Girls & Game Ads series. In this installation, she explains just what is wrong with the supposedly sexually-liberated, powerful woman archetypes (we have more than one now!) so prevalent everywhere (including video games). My favorite:
Over and over again, the ads and the games they sell build up women of strength – both physical and mental – only to ascribe that power to a facet of their sexuality. It turns their power into something pornographic. Into something that will titillate the assumedly male players in order to give them the thrill of controlling a powerful woman and the aspect of a woman that supposedly makes her powerful: her sexuality.
Video game ads–like games themselves, and practically the rest of pop culture–present the same images of sexy women whose power lies in arousing men… the ones who define what is attractive in the first place.
This applies to this and the below entries: It’s hard to write or to speak outside of ones experience. If it’s a mostly white male group writing scifi and making video games, it would be difficult to properly portray very much that’s not within the white male realm of life. White people have a hard time understanding the experiences non-white people have, and men have a hard time understanding the experiences women have. Like you said, it’s an act of extreme arrogance for me to assume that I, as a white male, can write accurately about non-white female experiences.
The above might apply less to a mostly made-up world, but I think that a lot of writers/game developers might stick to white men for fear of appearing sexist/racist were they use use other sexes or races. The people in charge (white men) are using sex as the source of female power, but in addition to the obvious sexism, it might also be because they don’t know any other way that “works”. Comments?
Comment by Rupert (25 comments) — January 8, 2006 @ 3:13 pm