Sarkeesian criticizes gaming tropes

By Max Moran | Published 6 hours ago | Updated 6 hours ago

On Monday, the University welcomed media critic Anita Sarkeesian for a lecture on sexist and anti-feminist tropes in video games. The lecture had initially been planned for February, but it had to be rescheduled due to major snowfall that caused travel problems.

Sarkeesian is the host and co-writer of “Feminist Frequency,” an online video series deconstructing sexist tropes in media, particularly video games. Since her work discussing games began, she has been the subject of online harassment, including rape and death threats, hacking and identity theft. Sarkeesian was one of the major targets of the “Gamergate” movement, which is a reaction against media trends toward diversifying gaming culture and criticizing the “gamer” identity. Previous Sarkeesian talks in other venues have received bombing and mass shooting threats, which may have been why audience members passed through a metal detector before entering the Wasserman Cinematheque to hear the lecture.

Chairman of the Computer Science department Prof. Jordan Pollack (COSI) introduced Sarkeesian, stating his pleasure at the lecture’s co-sponsors, and pointing out that “it’s not often that computer science works together with the various women’s studies groups on campus.” Pollack said he was inspired to invite Sarkeesian to speak at the University after a colleague suggested that more women and people of color might be inspired to pursue computer science if the University’s department taught game programming and design, and Sarkeesian’s story stood out to Pollack. “I believe a modern university must study and teach video games as a multidisciplinary media,” Pollack said.

Sarkeesian then took the stage, beginning with what she said was a simple assertion: “video games matter.” She said that while it is not “a simple one-to-one correlation,” the media that people consume influences them, which is why criticism, especially feminist criticism, is important. Sarkeesian said she started Feminist Frequency because she was frustrated at the inaccessibility of feminist thought she discovered in college and wanted to use pop culture as a way to engage a wider audience with feminism. Her first series of Feminist Frequency videos dissected tropes in pop culture at large, and after they found moderate success, she decided to release a second series. Noticing that almost all of the tropes she was interested in were prevalent in video games, Sarkeesian decided that this series of videos would specifically discuss tropes in gaming.

Next, Sarkeesian briefly discussed the online harassment she’s received for her work, though she stressed that she didn’t want to talk about harassment for the majority of the lecture. She characterized her harassers as a “cyber mob,” — a group which collectively shames and discredits its target with the underlying goal of reinforcing their own dominance within a given culture, in this case, gaming.

Sarkeesian asserted that Gamergate is an extension of this same mob mentality and that it works to maintain the status quo of games being made primarily for men. She then compared the exclusion of women in gaming to the common stigma within gaming that certain games are not played by “true gamers.”

“The idea that you can love something and be critical of it at the same time is so important to what I do,” Sarkeesian told the audience as she transitioned into the heart of the lecture with a slide reading “8 Ways To Improve Games For Women.” She listed eight tropes in gaming plots and presentation that portray women negatively and offered solutions and examples of games which have avoided the tropes.

The first trope was the “Smurfette Principle,” wherein a story has only one female character for a full ensemble of men. Sarkeesian specifically pointed out 2013’s “The Wonderful 101,” which features seven playable male characters who are color-coded, but only one female character, whose color is pink. Sarkeesian noted that the female character’s abilities reinforce that “‘girl’ is her personality,” pointing out that she fights with a dominatrix-esque whip and is introduced in a trailer for the game through a shots that needlessly include her underwear.

Sarkeesian introduced the second trope — “Lingerie Is Not Armor,” — by showing a trailer for the 2000 game “Perfect Dark,” which depicted its female spy protagonist taking a shower, putting on makeup, and deciding on an outfit. Sarkeesian argued that game designers often think only about titillating a straight male audience when designing outfits for female characters, and jokingly suggested a solution to the problem by changing the slide to several pictures of sports bras. “They’re designed to prevent jiggle physics,” she added.

Her third trope was called “One Size Does Not Fit All,” which she introduced by pointing out that almost all female characters in the game “League of Legends” are young, large-breasted, slender women. Sarkeesian stated that since sexualized women are almost the only women depicted in the medium, it reinforces that these characters’ worth is to excite the audience. She elaborated that those who point out sexualized men in games to counter her arguments are creating a false equivalency. Showing an image of the main characters from the upcoming game “Overwatch,” Sarkeesian pointed out that the male characters have a range of body types, while all but one of the female characters are sexualized.

The fourth trope, humorously titled “Strategic Butt Coverings,” began with a series of clips of female player characters walking in games, all of which featured camera angles that prominently display the characters’ behinds. To contrast this, Sarkeesian showed clips of male player characters — when the player could focus the camera on a male characters’ behind, heavy clothing or capes obscured the characters’ cheeks, which contrasted sharply with the female characters. According to Sarkeesian, this emphasis on characters’ rear ends tells players that the woman’s sexual body parts are what they should focus on, rather than the character themselves, as for the men. She pointed to 2015’s “Life is Strange” as a game which avoided this problem, simply by having its female protagonist wear jeans and a knapsack.

Fifth, Sarkeesian noted that women in games are overwhelmingly white, and that when women of color are depicted, it is usually through a lens of sexualized racism that caricatures these characters as “savage” or “untamable.” She pointed to “Never Alone,” a game made by an Alaskan indigenous community about their own culture, as a notable exception to this trope.

Sarkeesian then pointed out the sexualization of female characters’ walking animations, comparing a clip of Catwoman in “Batman: Arkham City” to a model on a runway. Her seventh trope was titled “Fighting and Fucking are Different,” which she introduced by playing audio of a female character moaning sexually. When she revealed that this audio was of a “League of Legends” character in combat, the audience laughed. Sarkeesian extended the trope to point out that female fighting dialogue is often sexual as well and that this trope both conflates violence with sex and communicates that female sexuality is dangerous, rather than positive or fun. She indicated “Assassin’s Creed: Unity” as a recent game that avoided this trope.

Finally, Sarkeesian asked the audience: “Where Are All the Female Combatants?” She pointed out that games rarely feature women as standard enemies and said that game designers she’s interviewed often say that this is done to avoid depicting violence against women. Sarkeesian said that there are ways to show female enemies without it being problematic, saying that violence against women is an issue when the violence is committed specifically because the target is a woman.

A brief question-and-answer segment followed the lecture, which was this year’s Martin Weiner lecture in Computer Science, and was co-sponsored by the Computer Science department, the Office of the Provost, the Office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences, the Chief Information Officer, the English department, the Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies program, the Sociology and Social Justice Police Program and the Women’s Studies Research Center.