You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September 2014.
Religion plies its trade in fear. Thank you khaki dude for providing such a clear example.
This is a post based on a personal experience. The general topic of the sexist nature of video game culture can be found here.
As of late, I’ve been on a bit of League of Legends binge; a fact the Intransignet One can well attest. The problem with League of Legends (LoL) is that the competitive aspects of the game makes it very rewarding to win and thus, difficult to not to play. It is a strategic game based on skillful play and teamwork – it rewards the teams that communicate and work together. Thus, voice over IP in the competitive stream, provides a definite leg up on those who do not use voice communication.
Ah the glories of voice communication… it exposes one to other gamers with different backgrounds and social experiences and therein lies the problem. What do you do when one of your teammates, as a part of their regular vocabulary, uses the word ‘rape’ to describe what is happening in game?
As in: “We are raping hard right now!” as a descriptor of our team doing very well or, “we’re getting raped” when we happen to be losing.
Here is where I pause because I’m stuck and I know I should not be. Rape is traumatic, horrible crime that should not be normalized in gamer talk. Yet, when I was confronted with it, I sat passively by and said nothing (tacit acceptance, if you’re keeping score). There were five people chatting and they noted that those darned Canadians were a quiet polite lot. Little did they know the social struggle going on within me.
The pressure to accept the normalized use of the word rape was stifling as it would mean, on my behalf, requesting that said individuals please refrain from using that terminology in chat. I was part of a social group and we were all having fun playing a game – and it would mean harshing that particular mellow.
In hindsight I can see that all the social baggage that prevented me from speaking up was/is utter bullshit. There is no excuse for not calling out rape culture when it is staring you right in the face, yet I declined to act, thus propagating and encouraging the rape culture that I vigourously campaign against in other facets of my life.
This is a personal failure of integrity and will. It leaves me feeling disappointed in myself and my culture.
Let it be said up front that this cranky second waver bears no animus with regards to hamsters, electric vehicles, or dancing. Yet, once these elements are mixed into the toxic soup of everyone’s favourite capitalistic patriarchal construct – better known as ‘our society’ – hilarity is bound to ensue.
The advertisement in whole, before we begin.
This commercial is about selling cars. (Duh!) But who is the target audience? (if you thought hamsters, please leave now there are places better suited for your attentions). Let’s break this down and take a look at the characters.
Science Hamster #1 – Red bow-tie, suspenders.
Science Hamster#2 – Red bow-tie, red glasses and polka dot shirt.
Science Hamster#3 – Rasta hat, white shirt.
Because not all dudes are not into science! Bonus marks for catching the racial commentary this characterization is making.
Female Hamster in Ball – Brown and cute. Context wise we don’t know the ball hamster is female, but with time spent on establishing a connection one could assume.
Small, helpless, and cute. Thematic material anyone?
We’re 10 seconds into the commercial and what do we have here – 3 male represented characters creating, designing, and actively teching out with all sorts of futuristic displays and machinery. The female role, to smiled and waved at; the unsurprising passive receptacle for male attentions.
Audio note – “Baby I’m preying on you tonight. Hunt you down eat you alive,. Just like animals (x2). Ah yes because the predator/prey relationship is so sexy, and filled with equality too!
Well nothing new here under the sun so far, but as with most patriarchal adventures it gets worse the farther you go. Our intrepid female hamster gets herself into a jam by wheeling her ball into the experimental area and is zapped along with the vehicle by the transmogrifying beams of science.
Oh, silly female! Caution be thrown to the wind cause she doesn’t get Science!
Our first glimpse of her portents much of what is to come. Disembodied woman parts with feminine signifiers for the winz!
The body parts of women – sexy!
The requisite Male gaze.
To quote Keanu Reeves: Whoa…
And after a full body pan, we as viewers to get to experience the male gaze. Just some reinforcement in case you missed the objectification the first time around.
Audience gets to objectify her to, as women should be judged by the quality of their tuckus.
Now that we have primed the audience for sexual objectification, lets use it to sell the damn car!
Inviting female = inviting car?
Where is the female empowerment (do tell my Third Wave friends)?!? Oh wait the power of love. How charmingly original for a female character (do contrast this with the creator, the scientist, the engineer).
Empowerful stuff going on here.
Oh, dudes like their technology more than any single vampy female. Let’s get a shot of her looking flummoxed so we can reiterate the “female body selling car” angle again. We do remember the advertising truism – the sexual objectification of women sells.
Damn, they picked me over a car, what could they possibly after?
Our intrepid dudes roll to the nearest pet store to ‘pick up some chicks’. Consider the perceived power differential – the dudes looming over a cage of helpless females – and of course the anvilicious buying of women for happy fun sexy times.
Write your own snark about how empowering prostitution is…
So cue more science and boom! Let the female empowerment roar while striking sexy poses for dudes (science and/or otherwise)!
Huh, because vamping for dudes is approved female behaviour!
Recently bough females remarkable receptive to their buyers, with nuzzling and other overt signs of female powah affection.
Oh, we like you dudes and our role as eye-sex-candy and everything is awesome, see how much fun are having?
Cue the formation dancing with of course, our protagonists front and centre, we must never forget the centrality of the man and his power.
Never forget who is the subject and who is the object.
And thus endeth the analysis.
Going through this post made me think of all the conversations, mostly with men, about how we don’t need feminism anymore because we are an equal society now thus there is no use for feminism or feminist analysis. This was a cute commercial until you actually look at the underlying patriarchal messages that surprisingly happen to dovetail nicely how society perceives, and thus, how society treats women in 2014.
You could knock me over with a feather given how surprised I am about the level of misogyny present in our media.
As always, IBTP.
Aron Ra begins his series with a nice set up about how the extreme religious tend to frame evolution as being exclusively atheistic. I suppose anything that can be used to flog/frighten people to the cause is fair game for the radically religious.
Never underestimate the powah of the Kitteh!… :)
Patriarchy pissing in the punchbowl for hundreds of years continues to make things crappy, even in the land of video games.
I have our local University Radio station CJSR to thank for turning me onto this Canadian band called the Souljazz Orchestra. The songs I’ve heard so far all make me want to chair dance and/or wiggle embarrassingly in my car.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…