The SCUMM Manifesto

bahahahorel:

So, did someone say Portal and feminism?

I’m neither intellectual enough to write this academically nor creative enough to relate this in a fic, so here is some semi-organized brainspawn.

For the purposes of this post, if I refer to men as group disparagingly I’m talking about them as extensions and symbolic representations of the patriarchy, not as individuals. I don’t hate men.

Also, I do not agree with the tenets of second wave feminism. While my history of feminism 101 course was a formative part of my youth, I’ve since learned much about feminism that I try to apply to my own politics and opinions. So, connecting Portal to second wave feminism is not a wholesale endorsement of it.

Caroline. She’s a white, probably middle-class woman who is in her youth in the 50’s and 60’s. She has a career that is typically gendered (secretary), and the little canon information we have about her seems to show us that she is accommodating and hardworking (“Yes, sir, Mr. Johnson!), as a woman in her position would be expected to be. But as people much more analytically inclined than I am have pointed out here, Caroline actually uses her situation to her advantage, and occupies one of Aperture Science’s most influential roles.

So  she is the perfect person with which to begin this allegory for second wave feminism.

She is not a doting housewife, but she is doing “women’s work”, and she is using her “””submissive””” position to influence the world in significant ways.

But then, suddenly, she is given power  when she is used to create GLaDOS.

In order to keep the historically oppressed women GLaDOS from starting a riot dispensing neurotoxin, the scientists (mostly represented by men in Lab Ratt and Doug’s art) hook her up to some cores.

The cores are supposed to suppress her personality by forcing her to adopt traits that are not native to her.

They ingrain these traits that are not hers into her in order to make her behave and submit. They try to shape and mold her personality into something it is not.

Let’s take a look at these cores.

There is morality core, because (white) women are supposed to be good and kind.

There is curiosity core, who is childlike because women are supposed to be childish (which feeds into paternal patriarchal feelings).

There is cake core, which literally just reads off recipes, because do I even have to explain?

And there is anger core, because women are irrational and overemotional.

The men in Caroline’s life perceive that she has power and have to stop her from using it by making her believe that she has to be these things she is not and forcing the traits on her.

Note that this power she has is now explicit overt power, rather than the power she managed to get by being close to Cave. That is the power that threatens men.

So Caroline goes from “knowing her place” as a woman to having power and threatening men, to being silenced by having a formulaic femininity thrust upon her with the cores.

And sexism cuts both ways! The cores that destroy Wheatley, that corrupt him, are traditionally “masculine” traits: macho bravado, factual rationale, and intrepid pioneerism. The expectations of masculinity destroy the “male” core.  

It isn’t a perfect metaphor. It isn’t a perfect feminist narrative. But there are definitely traces of feminism in the story and characters that are important because media matters.

This is not a definitive essay post, it is the beginning of a conversation. I haven’t even mentioned the power of having a (possibly disabled) woman of color as the hero of a game, or what it could mean that she strips GLaDOS of the expectations that the men have put on her. I haven’t matched up the dates to feminist movements. I haven’t talked about how the narrative surrounding two fully fleshed out women is feminist. But Portal is undoubtedly a feminist game.

As I am about to do some writing on Portal 1/2, this is a relevant introduction.

(Let’s also mention just very briefly the absolutely incendiary Freudianism of a name like “Cave Johnson”)

(Source: roboticor)

3liza:

(RPS’ comment system is holding onto this comment without publishing it, probably because it contained links, so I’ll just post it here.  This is in response to this article about game studio Deep Silver producing and marketing a severed female torso as a collectible toy for the game, claiming it is an homage to the Venus de Milo.)

1. The Venus de Milo is Greek, not Roman.

2. It has a head and a complete set of legs, and in no way represents sexual violence.

3. In 1981, Japanese exchange student Issei Sagawa murdered and cannibalized a Dutch woman named Renée Hartevelt while both were studying in France. He shot her point blank with a shotgun, then raped the corpse and set about dismantling it. I won’t link to Hartevelt’s autopsy photos, but they show a piecemeal torso and limbs in exactly the same condition as the above figure, with one difference: the breasts have been severed in order to be eaten. Sagawa escaped France with the help of his wealthy father, never standing trial. He made a hell of a good living on the interview circuit for a while, produced a crude comic book detailing the crime, and starred in an exploitative and violent porno. The happy ending is that since the death of his parents, he now lives in squalor and can’t get a job.

Why am I telling you this?

Because Sagawa was likewise fascinated by decapitated “de Milo” forms, as seen in one of his many, many paintings of the same.

Decapitation, the removal of limbs and particularly faces from actual bodies, or of photographs or depictions of bodies (primarily of women), is a theme prevalent in serial killings themselves, as well as art produced by sexual predators/the mentally ill, particularly those who fantasize about doing harm to the subject, generally for the purposes of revenge or domination. It is essentially raping a figure in effigy, and removing their personhood (represented by the face/head), and it this case literally “possessing” the remaining “desired” flesh.

edit: It’s interesting to note that the Deep Silver fig does not appear to be a zombie.  It has living flesh tone, fresh blood, and no particular indicators of being undead at all, or even having been recently undead.  It appears to be a regular human female torso, as seen in any serial killer’s refrigerator.  So why is it being used to promote a zombie game?  Surely an actual zombie would have been more interesting?

All art is a kind of objectification but you have to be pretty disingenuous to claim you don’t see any problem whatsoever with marketing, buying, owning, and enjoying what is essentially a sex toy covered in fake blood. Arguments of “well it’s my right to buy whatever I want” and “well it’s their right to market whatever they want” are strawmen, because that’s not what’s being challenged, here. Of course you have the right to buy or market any kind of loathsome garbage you feel like. God Bless America. What’s being challenged here is the attitude behind developing and producing an expressly misogynist toy. It’s in poor taste, yes, but it’s also extraordinarily, aggressively alienating to women and anyone with a scrap of human empathy.

If brevity is your thing: this is horseshit.

What struck me immediately about the Deep Silver figure is its similarity to silicon masturbation dolls coveted and treasured by men who don’t have any use for a sex partner with a head or limbs. It’s literally a sex doll on a stand. That’s how they want their toy, their game, and their brand to be seen: it’s FOR men, and it’s FOR male sexual gratification, full stop. No girls in the clubhouse. Because this is what we think of you, ladies.

We just removed all the parts of you that we didn’t need.

[continued from part 1: The Oasis of the Real]

PART II

The team lineup.  From left to right: Pyro, Engineer, Spy, Heavy Weapons Guy, Sniper, Scout, Soldier, Demoman, and Medic.
 
 

The TF2 team members are, each of them, individual archetypes of “classical” masculinity.

The Heavy is the good-natured and huggable bear (protective; physically massive), the Medic is the aloof intellectual (professorial; teutonic), the Spy is the sleazy Eurotrash Lothario (seductive; manipulative), the Scout is the hyperactive teenager (shallow bravado masking youthful self-doubt), the Sniper is the easygoing outdoorsman (rugged; distant), the Demoman is the “damaged goods” drunkard^[6] (as symbolized by his eyepatch and slouching shape), Engineer is the cornfed and capable All-American Dad (friendly; mechanically-minded), and Soldier is the aging army man (strict; blustery).

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PART I

The first time I found a Team Fortress 2 thread on 4chan’s yaoi board ^[1], I was amazed.

Spy and Sniper on a couch, by Kob.

As an online multiplayer-only, plotless, mindlessly-violent first-person-shooter, I had assumed that the female fanbase would be limited; confined mostly to diehard first-person-shooter (FPS) enthusiasts, a subset of games with few female devotees.  Fewer in number than female WoW players, or Harry Potter readers, certainly. Despite this, the vast majority of the TF2 fanart posters—and artists—seemed to be women. Weirder still, not all of them even played the game, and very few of them played the game regularly.  This was stunning.  It was as if I had happened upon a cargo cult—imagine someone showing up to a Star Trek convention with exquisite Spock fan art and a beautiful costume, having never watched the show.

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