So, apparently there have been some controversial trailers unveiled
at E3 this year, once again placing gender representation firmly in
the limelight of videogames in a matter not seen since the craziness
regarding the original Mass Effect. The question with a lot of the
trailers, particularly in the Square-Enix camp involved their
immaturity regarding gender relations and controversial content,
particularly in the trailers for Hitman: Absolution and the reboot of
the long running Tomb Raider franchise. The latter is a more
contentious one which will be the driving point of this essay, but to
briefly sum up my views on the Hitman trailer, I believe it was less
an issue of scandalised sexualisation of religious figures but an
attempt to evoke the gritty dark aesthetic of seventies grindhouse
films that was too silly to be provocative. The Tomb Raider trailer
and various quotes from the lead designer are somewhat more
contentious in ways I will go into much greater depth later in the
piece, but suffice to say are a far cry from her days as a powerful
female figure, one of the main totemic figures of 'Girl Power'. It
seems like women in video games have lost their power, being cast
into the shadows of mainstream popular games and being the victims of
intense amounts of misogyny whenever they surface. It gets worse when
this rampant misogyny starts to infect figures fairly central to the
video game feminist Zeitgeist: Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider series
and Samus Aran from Metroid. Comparing their characterisation,
appearance and the implications thereof from their earliest
incarnations to now represents the power struggle between the third
wave Feminist movement and the Patriarchal Hegemony which has grown
increasingly misogynistic as the twenty first century enters its
second decade.
It's times like these you really miss Girl Power...
Introduction: What is Girl Power? And why the hell should I miss it?
Girl power is a movement that came into significant prominance in the
mid-1990s, though it did exist before that as part of the Riot Grrl
punk movement of the early 1990s, and thus has a tangential
relationship to third wave feminism. And since feminism is a massive
fundamental part of this essay and I will frequently be attempting to
read video games using feminist frameworks, I will briefly summarize
the three waves of feminism here and any feminist theory I use I'll
explain as I go.
The first wave of feminism was to give women the vote, which was
finally won in 1918 (with great caveats including having to be over
30; the real victory for all women was in 1928 when they could vote
at 21 like men at the time). The idea was to remove the shackles to
femininity that were mandated by law, most symbolised by that great
democratic right to vote and the individuality that it symbolised. It
is telling that it took nearly sixty years after the emancipation
proclamation which heralded the abolition of slavery in the US (and
thus for emancipated slaves to receive the vote) for women to also
gain it, and is a firm indication of the struggle to crack the
hegemony and allow women the most fundamental of democratic rights.
Second Wave Feminism was a tad more nebulous but was still with solid
goals. It was about equal rights for women, particularly in the
workplace. It was about equal pay for equal work, the right for a
woman to own her own body completely (usually best symbolised by Roe
vs Wade (1973) , the landmark US case on abortion), and other
equalities of sexuality. Believe it or not, but up until 1986 (in the
UK) sexual harassment was not criminalised, one of the biggest gains
of the Women's Liberation Movement (as it was called). It is probably
what most people think of when they think of feminism, with the
burning of bras, marches, strikes, radical feminism with Germaine
Greer's The Female Eunuch and works of fiction by authors such
as Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson, as well as a greater
visibility in women in workplaces typically dominated by men.
Third Wave Feminism is a lot harder to define, but is really less to
do with institutions and more to do with society as a whole. It
speaks far less in absolutes, as second wave feminism did, and more
about giving women of all races, colours, creeds and sexualities the
right to define feminism for themselves. It was about highlighting
the more hidden darker troubles surrounding feminine life, such as
gendered violence, rape, domestic abuse, reproductive rights (ie the
right of a woman to control her own body) and so. It focuses
thematically on the reclaiming on concepts, words and ideas that have
been wielded as weapons against them, which ironically enough
includes the word feminist, as well as the body, the mind and
the sense of self, through various means.
What
does any of this have to do with Girl Power? Well, in the mid 90s, as
the second wave began to fade away and the third wave was beginning
to find its stride in popular culture, there existed a middle ground,
inspired by the Riot Grrl movement. It was punk rock, by girls (or is
it grrls?), for girls and about girl issues, like domestic abuse and
the continued oppression of women. This wouldn't sit right with the
typical pop music listener so it was made more market friendly and
eventually you got Shampoo, a pop-punk duo, mainly known for an awful
song called Trouble, a song mainly known for the savaging that fellow
Riot Grrl Lucy McKenzie gave them and it, infamously going so far as
to claim claim “Shampoo = Miss June And July Of The
Paedophile Calendar". It was an awful song that inevitably ends
up on School Dance megamixes and will do until the end of time, but
it kind of summed up the girl power aesthetic as a very public
reaction to very controlled images of femininity. This began in music
with Shampoo but came to its very public peak with The Spice Girls, a
five piece band, each singer (though I use the term loosely with Mrs
Beckham) who each represented a different stereotype. You had Ginger
Spice the leader, Sporty Spice (who may have popularised the 'girl
power' trend of female singers wearing midriff baring tops and
trousers), Scary Spice (who for unfortunate implications fans amongst
you, is black), Posh Spice (Posh in this universe means wearing
insanely tight and short minidresses) and Baby Spice (the blonde
one). Their view of girl power was essentially singing the same sorts
of songs as every other female pop outfit, but adding a hint of
attitude. This was shown mostly in their first and biggest hit
“Wannabe”, where (sing along with me readers) if you want to be
their lover, you got to get with their friends. For the most part it
was about empowerment, showing people who missed the memo during the
Women's Liberation Movement that they could now think for themselves,
here's a ton of media creations telling you that you can (providing
it's within their pre-prepared ideas of 'identity').
So yeah,
it's a mess of consumerist ideas of feminism and attempting to be
strong independent women while at the same time not. It's a bizarre
dichotomy of mutually exclusive ideas all tied together in an
impossible ideal. It strives for “assertiveness, ambition and
individualism” (to quote the OED definition) but due to its
confines in consumerism it can't achieve any of them, since actual
individualism doesn't sell brands. But on the same note, I can't hate
it. Because compared to the alternative (women as either victims,
objects or silenced) a patronising, market-tested strong female
character (TM) is indeed a far better proposal, and also opened the
door for genuine strong females to appear in pop culture, such as
Xena Warrior Princess, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and professional
wrestler Chyna, as well as host of imitators.
And it is at
this point I can get into the bigger fish of this piece. Video games
were no stranger to the movement, and between its inception and its
zenith, two of the biggest female icons in video game history
released their most land mark titles: Super Metroid in 1994 (with the
first metroid a decade earlier in 1986) and Tomb Raider in 1996. I
will be exploring both of these series in turn, framing them with
feminist theory and explaining their individual importance to
feminism and the ideal of gender equality in video games, as well as
their down turn and the negative implications of their most recent
games, Metroid Other M and the yet to be released Tomb Raider reboot.
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