Theme: Class
When I did the last project, I mentioned in the LP about the notion of wanting to do something not only about class but also combined with gender. So in this project, I want to focus on how class influences female characters representing in video games. Then I found an artist named Angela Washko whose majority works are focusing on the relationship between female and video games. One of her projects particularly interests me. In this project, she focus on “pick-up artists” who publish book, blogs or video games in order to seduce or have sexual interactions with/access to women.
http://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/695920
Angela Washko interviews a pick-up artist named Roosh V and discuss the definition of this kind of culture and the female’s position in his works.
One part in the interview grabs my attention:
11:30 – 12:11
Angela Washko: “Can you just describe about ‘Bang’, ‘The Bang’, … and so on?”
Roosh V: “Each book is just basically trying to help man learn how to meet women and initiate sexual relationships. How to start the conversation with the woman, how to build an attraction with a woman, how to get her into bed in a way that doesn’t make her feel weird, that doesn’t make her feel awkward, that doesn’t make her feel like a slut the next day.”
In this conversation, I felt like female is treated like a goal, a subject in the “book”, and female’s emotions are controlled by male’s behaviors, which makes me feel uncomfortable. It’s like female is something you can get if you do this, this and that.
Then I found out Angela Washko made an immersive installation named The Game: The Game which is recently exhibited in The Museum of Moving Image in NewYork. This video game uses female as the first perspective (which players experience) and uses dialogues between characters to develop the plots. Angela Washko uses the phrases and “techniques” in “pick-up artists”‘s books and video games to form the dialogue in The Game: The Game, and in this game, such dialogues happen between a woman (the player) and several “seduction couches”.
http://angelawashko.com/section/437138-The-Game-The-Game.html
http://transfergallery.com/the-game-the-game-angela-washko/
I went to The Museum of Moving Image and experienced The Game: The Game. The wallpaper and the lights are all dark red, and players need to sit at chairs and put on earphones to play the game. As a female, the dialogues in the game made me really uncomfortable, and the female first perspective I was experiencing made the game even more real and threatening. I played two rounds: at first round, I rejected the “seducers” invitations in every section, and the result is I go back home and watch movies with my cats; the second round I chose yes in every dialogue and the result is I was raped and the process is recorded by the “seducers”. At the second round, I was really uncomfortable not only because the plots in the game, but also because I was facing the wall, and people behind me can see the choices I made.
I find this installation is so thought-provoking by placing the real exists things (“pick-up artists” creations) into a video game and made the first perspective as a female. I saw some man played the game in the museum, and none of them stayed more than 10 minutes. (One person said:”This is too much.” when he went away.) Because every woman can be the goal in such scene regardless of their own willings, but in “pick-up artists” and men (even some women)’s eyes who read their books or play the game, they are just learning about how to deal with sexual relationships. After I visited the exhibition, I stared to wonder if it’s the same situation in some video games and why.
Then I found another project Angela Washko did about how the players in Warcraft (which the main audiences are male) think about the relationship between female and male in the game.
And I found an interesting perspective. “In ancient times, men were the guardians and hunters of the villages while the women took care of the village itself. It is programmed into the men’s code to protect women.”
This perspective made me think about how female characters are represented in video games, I found out most of the female characters are appearance-acctrating and neither need to be saved by the main female character or are weaker that need to complete things by attracting others using physical body. (Angela Washko also did a project about the similar situation: http://angelawashko.com/artwork/2716231-Don-t-Leave-Me.html)
Another article talks about such issue:
https://www.hastac.org/blogs/ezobel/2014/03/06/damsels-distress-female-representation-video-games
This kind of scenes called “Damsel in distress”,
and in The Museum of Moving Image, I found some examples as well. In the iconic video games “Donkey Kong”, the main male character need to overcome several difficulties to save the princess.
I thought about the perspective of man protection women from ancient times. Maybe the formation of the image of female characters in video games due to their social status and the main audience. Since the market and the society believes video games are “boy’s thing”, they put such “Damsel in distress” scenes in the games to attract male players and cater to their conception of social status of gender. (Man hunts/work, woman raises children/take care of family)
Also, I found out the situation of imbue such concept with children (especially female) from really young:
http://angelawashko.com/artwork/3126609-It-s-Just-Not-Fair.html
Sailor Moon is a worldwide famous cartoon. The main audience are young girls, and the only male character wears mask. Although the main characters are all females, which seems like encouraging girl power, but the main character Sailor Moon always cry for the male character’s help when she encounter difficulties. It’s really painful to see females are accepted such ideas since they are little girls.
I found an academic article about the female characters in video games:
http://compaso.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Compaso2015-61-Kondrat.pdf
“78.4% female participants agreed that there is stereotyping of female gender in video games when 21.6% did not. When it comes to males, which are 182 respondents of the survey, 76.4% of them replied “Yes” and 23.6% said “No”.” And the two largest-agreed stereotypes are “female gender is sexually objectified in video games” and “female characters are dressed provocatively”. It seems both man and woman notice the stereotypes of female in video games, but the situations still exits in video games suggesting that such stereotype or plots still have market and the businesses still get profits. So I think such situation about the position of female in video games reflects female’s social status in real life, and is formed by so many creations of visual culture in the society for a long time. Maybe the situation is changing, but it takes time.
My final taxonomy:
Photo gallery:
Digging Deeper Into Your Taxonomy (bridge 3 part II)
- What location did you visit for your visual research and what did you find?
I went to The Museum of Moving Image and experienced The Game: The Game which is an immersive installation artist Angela Washko made to represent the “pick-up” culture and its influences.
- How did the locations (museum/gallery/etc.) you visited expand/broaden/deepen your understanding of your topic? (this could be visual, contextual, historical, material based, etc.)
The most thing in the museum of moving image deal with movies and video games. So I can access to more source of female characters in visual cultures (especially moving image forms) other than Angela Washko’s works. I also can the changes of female characters showing in moving images through time.
- List the symbols, metaphors and visual references you put in your taxonomy and explain how/why they are relevant/important to your topic.
Some symbols in my taxonomy: female avatars (warriors) in video games, video games dashboards, movie magazines, gender-identified physical body parts. I want to challenge the situation of materialize female in video games right now and discuss the shift of video games market due to visual culture.
