Also it pisses me off that violence in video games is ok for men, but not women and children. Again, the ancient rules of warfare. Human life counts no matter who is getting a facefull of lead. Artists and designers and concept makers: if you don't have the balls to depict dead women and dead children, it doesn't make sense to be okay with depicting dead men. It's all dead people.
Gamazon: Dead Girls Have More Fun
I don’t think the idea of making a “dead girl” prop would ever have occurred to them.
Is that because they don’t like women? Or have some agenda to deny the existence of women? No. It’s actually because they have not even the tiniest shred of a subconscious urge to hurt a woman. Nor does it give them even the slightest pleasure to imagine a woman suffering or dying, or to envision what a dead and partially devoured woman might look like. This is not about talent, about dev time, or about sexism: it’s about a man’s own emotional limits as an artist. There are some things that just don’t necessarily make a person happy with himself after a day’s work. Fiddling with the mutilated corpses of women is high on the list.
You bring up an interesting point that has been kicked around in my feminist studies classes (more specifically, peace studies and feminist ideology). What seems so complicated is that its a strange cycle of assumptions, where a stereotype of women is that they are non-violent because they give birth and are caretakers. Beyond that, there is that sneaky assumed biological inferiority (less muscular, etc.). Women and Warfare (existing as theoretical frameworks)never meet conceptually because there is total separation of the notions in general.
ReplyDeleteWe can establish the above premise, but the real exercise is the 'so what'? What are the repercussions of that line of thought; what is better? To include female soldiers or feminize war strategies? You bring up a great point - is it better to maintain the status quo where the depiction of war death is men (therefore a gendered concept) or is it better to represent it as a stark reality of humanity? I'd imagine complicating the idea of warfare and faces of soldiers would make people more anti-violent.
Anyway, your post got me thinking. This is no small feat on an afternoon where the Blue Angels are disrupting my attention span. Love, love, love your blog.