For those of you playing along at home, here is my baseline annotated works cited. You'll notice that there are some of these articles that I have not posted about yet, but I assure you, that was only because this works cited was due, and I will be catching you guys up pretty soon.
Clover,
Carol J. "Her Body, Himself: The Final Girl." Men Women and
Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. London: BFI, 1992. 35-41.
Print.
Although
the actual section of Clover’s book on “The Final Girl” is short, it has become
a vital part of my thesis. Clover argues that female characters that act as the
main protagonist in horror films, the ones who survive the ending and triumph,
are relatable to the target audience, preteen boys, because they have had their
feminity stripped from them while remaining a marginalized character. Through
their lack of sexuality or voyeurism towards any particular male body they
become devoid of sex or are more likely to be sexually curious about another
woman’s body. They wear flannel, are bookish and quiet and have not yet come
into their own. They become the avatar for the young male viewer and must earn
their metaphorical ‘phallus’ through intense trial. Similarly, many female game
characters are given a traditional place as the “mannish” woman. They either
have no sexuality, are coded as lesbians, or have their sexuality neutered from
them by circumstance. This relatability to the young male consumer is important
to my thesis because it explains why my original topic choice, explaining cross
gendered identification between players and characters, is flawed; if the
characters are intentionally created to be more identifiable with the male
player, then there are not many outlets to see how men identify in the avatar
of a truly feminized presence.
Jenkins,
Henry. "Complete Freedom of Movement: Video Games as Gendered Play
Spaces." The Game Design Reader A Rules of Play Anthology (2006):
330-61. Web
The
associative identity between players and avatars cannot be summed up solely by
the characters themselves but by the spaces they inhabit. Jenkins work focuses
on the prior segregation between girl’s spaces and boy’s spaces within the
realm of 19th century literature—the “Adventure Island” verses the “Secret
Garden”. Not only does he confront the polarized environment that is forced on
to children, he also organizes his own polarized definitions of current female
play spaces as well as current male spaces, so that he can eventually discuss
the concept of a gender-neutral play space. He makes a compelling argument for
videogame spaces that defy preconceived gender stereotypes and focus on giving
girl gamers a wider spatial exploration, filled with more action and adventure,
and giving boys one that encodes more “domestic” puzzles and secrets to promote
character development and motivation behind actions. It is my belief that his
concepts of gendered play spaces could, in part, be responsible for the male
anxiety about adding more female avatars to games – believing that if they
allow more female characters then the game will become domesticized and lose
its playability. This is intriguing as much of Jenkins’ final argument, of a
neutered play space has already come to pass as characters and world creation
through motivation have been landmarks of successful games in just a few short
years – a move which utilizes the best portions of traditionally female and
traditionally male play spaces. The misconception between a gendered space and
a character with a gender, and the anxiety that can occur because of these gender
differences is a key factor in both how all gamers identify with characters and
how they identify with the worlds created by them.
Kennedy,
Helen W. Lara Croft: Feminist Icon or Cyberbimbo? 2002. Www.gamestudies.org,
Vol. 2 Issue 2. PDF.
To
a certain degree, Kennedy’s article on Lara Croft encapsulates many parts that
I would have written about myself had I tried to write my thesis over ten years
ago. However, ten years have passed, and with a larger base of games as well as
approaches to gaming (such as the first person female character), there are
many things to take from Kennedy’s article and focus upon the direct relation
between male players and female characters, lesbianism in gaming, and the
identification that occurs between female players and male characters as well
as male players to female ones. Kennedy discusses Lara Crofts bimodal appeal –
for women as a representative of the female gender, and for men as a commodious
other to be objectified. However, Kennedy’s spectrum goes beyond a simple binary,
giving many different levels of gender discussion to speak about Lara Croft.
She speaks of Lara Croft as a continuation of the “laddette” culture, prominent
in the millennial era, as well as the concept of “stunting bodies” which
represent women as “female figures which, through their performance of
extraordinary feats, undermine conventional understandings of the female body”.
In part, these concepts paint Lara as a masculinized figure – one that happens
to have a pair of humongous polygons as her only signifier of ‘woman’. Kennedy
discusses Lara’s relation as a gender-queer figure (incomplete because of
recent developments which code Lara more so as a lesbian than was made
available in 2002), and as a voyeuristic model to be gazed upon. She even goes
far enough to question all meaning behind these gendered models, stating the
cold hard truth: that these characters are simply mechanics with a pretty face
– the automatons of a new world.
Lehman,
Peter. "Crying over the Melodramatic Penis: Melodrama and Male Nudity in
Films of the 90s." Masculinity: Bodies, Movies, Culture. New York:
Routledge, 2001. 25-39. Print.
This
article has become more important than I previously realized it would be. It
embraces the stark polarities between the types of masculinity that are
‘allowed’ to be portrayed in the mainstream world of cinema (and therefore
videogames). These binaries, which consist of an ideal of masculinity stemming
from power (often held by otherwise marginalized and villainous characters) and
masculinity stemming from honor (attained by the marginalized protagonist who
must earn his masculinity through great trial). This honorable masculinity is
not solely a masculine trait bestowed upon men but also symbolically upon the
worthy youth and the worthy woman. It is interesting how such marginalized
characters must both rely upon and give up their feminine traits in order to
achieve this honor. In addition, the article discusses, at length, the issues
with putting the male form on the screen and how it becomes a type of intense
melodrama to allow the penis/male form a place of objectification. The
melodramatic penis explains how we perceive the idealized man and how audiences
wish to witness the most exemplified form of masculinity and bath in its glory
or to otherwise reprimand the weak and flaccid ‘other’. It explains reasoning
behind why viewers do not often see representations of the average man.
Matrix,
Sidney. "Desire and Deviate Nymphos:." Journal of Homosexuality
31.1-2 (1996): 71-81. Web.
One
of the more complex portions of my topic has to do with the straight male
relation to the lesbian female. From my research, I have found that most female
characters in games tend to be either asexual or otherwise coded as lesbian.
Because so many games are created to appeal to the male gamer, it raises
questions as to how men can possibly identify with lesbian women. This article
talks about the use of Lesbianism in pop culture as yet another aid for male
pleasure. In it, it deals with the common stereotypes found and promoted, the
trivialization of lesbian love, and specifically the use of lesbianism as a
voyeuristic object suited for the male gaze. The article focuses, in part, on
how lesbian bodies are portrayed, when they are portrayed, and the confusing
dichotomy between associating with the image of any kind of lesbian
representation while simultaneously being oppressed by it. In particular, it is
this identification/oppression dynamic, as well as the lesbianism as a means of
male pleasure that will be useful when discussing how men and women relate to
these types of female videogame characters.
Mulvey,
Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Visual and Other
Pleasures. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1989. 14-26. Print.
Laura Mulvey opened up the field of film by
talking about artistic forms that are solely relevant to filmmaking. Although
many of her theories have been reversed or renegotiated thanks to the
advancement in the gay and female gazes, as well as subverted by videogames thanks
to the player controlled gaze feature characteristic of videogames, it still
has many applicable uses. In the clearest sense, Mulvey’s work is crucial for
understanding why there is a dearth of straight female (or gay) playable
characters. Mulvey argues that men cannot become objects of the gaze because
they are inherently the voyeurs not the voyees. Despite much evidence that
shows obvious examples of how men have often been the subjects of a gaze, this
concept of non-objectivity still holds much weight in the realm of videogames
today. Many female characters are stripped of their sexuality or are otherwise
coded as lesbian. Mulvey’s theory suggests this is because men are incapable of
being the object – I disagree. I believe there is an inherent fear, in men, of
being the object of a gaze, and so to create characters that are more easily
relatable for men, they are not objectified often in mainstream game play.
Nakamura,
Lisa. 1999. “Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism on the Internet.” In
Victor Vitanza (ed.), CyberReader (2nd Edition). New York: Allyn and
Bacon.
Although
Nakamura’s work focuses in on Race as the method of identity tourism, her work
is easily transferrable to Gender. Although Nakamura focuses primarily on
racial conflict as appropriated by MMORPG players on the internet, who choose
to define themselves as a particular race, many of her theories, particularly
concerning the ‘safe’ other as avatar, will be important. She argues that
people who, on the internet, choose to ‘vacation’ as an alternate race are
given the benefits of the culture of the other without having to experience the
negative aspects that go along with it. She claims that the issues that occur
because of Identity tourism are not because of the tourism-as-other itself, but
from the flagrant mistreatment of racial stereotypes that hurt a culture. Some
of her work must be considered, for my topic, from other perspectives:
MMORPGers are given the option to choose what their character looks like and
how they define themselves, while most First Person console games pigeonhole
the player into a prefab avatar. They force you to become a white male or
occasionally a white female, whether you want to or not. Even in these avatars
there is still a notion of identity tourism.
Neale,
Steve. "Prologue: Masculinity as Spectacle Reflections on Men and
Mainstream Cinema." Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in
Hollywood Cinema. Ed. Steven Cohan and Ina Rae. Hark. London: Routledge,
1993. 9-19. Print.
Where
portions of Mulvey fall short, Steve Neale tries to fill in some of the gaps.
In his essay, he discusses the concept of how masculinity is portrayed in film
through a similar lens as Mulvey’s. Unlike Mulvey, however, he believes that
the male can be objectified on screen, albeit in a different manner. In regards
to my essay, his discussion on character identification is particularly useful:
He disagrees with Mulvey that the only people who identify with the male
protagonist are men, and the only people who identify with a female protagonist
are women. Instead, Neale has come up with a narcissistic identification that
promote a fluid gender identity that
fluctuates between identification and objectification of a character on screen.
I believe this fluctuation exists similarly for the player of a videogame,
perhaps to an even greater extreme. The avatar in a game follows direction from
the player; the player and character often move as one. However, in the event
of a cut-scene or dialogue sequence, the wall is broken and, in a Brechtian
manner the player is reminded that they and the avatar are not one and the same
but two separate entities. In addition, Neale also brings up the topic of
sado-masochistic voyeurism, as a method of explaining how the male form can be objectified
and appreciated without being obviously voyeured at.
Rehak,
Bob. 2003. Playing at Being. In: Wolf, Mark J.P. and Perron, Bernard. 2003. The
Video Game Theory Reader. New York, Routledge pp. 103-127.
Playing at Being utilizes psychology as a method of
explaining the relationship players of video games have towards their on screen
avatars. Although not grounded by any particular marginalized factor, Rehak
discusses the history of the avatar and how it has changed over the course of
time. He uses, in particular, the mirror stage of childhood development as an
analogy to why the avatar fascinates the women and men who choose to play video
games. Through a history lesson in the videogame avatar, dating all the way
back to Spacewar!, Rehak gives examples of how games have gone from having a mechanical
protagonist, to an organic one, to something much more similar to ourselves.
The avatar has multiple levels of being: on the one hand it is the ‘self’, as
defined by its movements guided by the player and reacted to by the on screen
world, but it is also the other, giving a player the potential to do both more
than the human can, but also constricted by the game design’s formula. Rehak
focuses also on how games can toy with subjectivity- leaving players believing
they are given choice and free will when they are artificially contrived to
force situations that will further the story along, begging the question,
who’s space is it, really?
Williams,
Linda. 1982. Personal Best: Women in Love. In: Jump Cut 27. 1982. pp. 1-12.
Williams discusses
the failings of the media’s portrayal of lesbian romance with the Film Personal
Best. She discusses its complexity, looking at the arguments both for and
against it as an agent of male voyeurism. The two women of the film have a
three year long affair, yet their own sexuality seems to fall into their laps.
In the end, Williams argues that what appears to be, on the surface, a film
about women in love conquering through their athleticism, turns out to have so
much influence from the outside patriarchal society that it actually promotes a
patriarchal society worldview. Her methods of picking apart a seemingly
revolutionary film prove insightful as I try to pick apart the use of the
lesbian as an avatar in videogames. What do these games actually say about
sexuality and gender? Like Williams does, I must pick apart the games to see
what undercurrents of topical sexism are not brought to the forefront and
maintain reflections of how the male society mind already thinks. In addition,
Williams discusses the change in the ideal female form from one of soft curves
to athleticism. It may be that the ideal woman to be looked at has changed
form, not become less frequently applied.
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