BioShock Infinite

[Frenetic Pony]

Frankly, white male protagonists sell well.

And all of these things are here to make money.

I don't suppose this actually touches on the missing stuff, in fact if they wanted to sell better good female characters that just a hair over half the population can more readily identify with would be a great idea. To say nothing of social conscience or "offending" people or etc.

Frankly that seems to be more of a problem than sexualizing women. Men get sexualized, how many white male protagonists are muscular and take their shirt off and etc.? But of course, the vast majority of men don't feel victimized as such. Surprisingly, a large portion of women don't feel victimized by being portrayed as sexy either. What's wrong with having an idle daydream about empathizing with someone who's better looking than you, or appreciating the attractiveness of others?

But there IS a section of women, far larger than men, that do feel "victimized" or some such similar word by this and call it "exploitation". And certainly that line of "exploitation" is a huge fuzzy section of spectrum as to where it crosses according to most people. But taking into account the "lack of interesting female characters" first, if just as a thought towards sales alone, seems at least as important as any conversation about physical portrayal and what seems ultimately to be largely a disagreement about personal preference over such.

I also love that society is rich enough to take time to feel offended over such. Not that I don't have an opinion on it, but that it's very cool that there are so many people with so little concern in their life that they can take time to argue this. I remember seeing a thread elsewhere on the net over "fat acceptance", which I find oddly hilarious. It makes me wonder how rich the world will be in 50 years, and what we'll get to caring for and arguing about then with our time. I suspect it's all going to be about virtual changes to our virtual reality simulators, the ignorance and stupidity of humanity willing. "OP" might become a swear word

[vimes]

Frankly that seems to be more of a problem than sexualizing women. Men get sexualized, how many white male protagonists are muscular and take their shirt off and etc.?

Please, do give some examples of white male Video game characters taking their shirt off or flexing their muscles.

[elmuerte]

Good point. Not even the Duke took off his shirt.

[Frenetic Pony]

Please, do give some examples of white male Video game characters taking their shirt off or flexing their muscles.

Video games? How about life in general. Seem to remember Thor with his shirt off. People joking about Robert Downey Jr. as Stark "He shoots sexy beams." Not that men have to try as hard to be sex symbols. What attracts women (and gay guys? not an expert) is, while physical, other stuff as well. A handsome face and the right attitude seems to be a big thing.

And again, you don't even realizing that's happening deliberately. Because it's not called "sexualizing" men, because you don't care. Doesn't mean it's no there and deliberate.

Certainly it happens less purposefully in video games though, vast array of shirtless guys included (I suppose there's enough women that like God of War). Still probably an oversight in potential sales there. Then again most games are still marketed towards straight males. Once there's games with defined human characters marketed towards female audiences you'll be guaranteed to see it happen in games more, yay sales! Of course, that's the objective here. Sales. There's people who are offended and who aren't offended. Great, you disagree, wonderful! There's no discussion there, except getting to tell your opinion to people. I guess that's entertainment in of itself though.

[Gwardinen]

Please, do give some examples of white male Video game characters taking their shirt off or flexing their muscles.

I feel like that question is getting off point, but there are plenty of males in games who are shirtless some or most of the time. A few that I can think of include Kratos, Monkey (from Enslaved), Thane, Big Boss, Kain... and Raziel in vampire form now that I think about it, Dante and the Prince (of Persia). I'm deliberately not mentioning any fighting game characters because there are so many of them and arguments can be made about the validity of martial artists not wearing shirts. I'm also not mentioning the many fantasy characters that are shirtless, which basically includes all non-humans in games like Warcraft.

Again, though, that feels rather off topic. There being many shirtless men in games and other entertainment media doesn't make sexualised women better, and I don't think Pony was trying to make that equivalence. It was a minor notation in his post at most, I think.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Yep, it's just SO difficult being a white male aged 18-35 living in a first world country. It makes me want to... *sniff* Sorry, it's so just hard sometimes. When I'm sitting in work, next to my female colleagues who are earning 10% to 30% less then me for doing exactly the same job, I sometimes wonder if they know the burden we men silently carry around within us. Sure, we're less likely to be discriminated against, more likely to be promoted, more likely to be listened to, and dominate senior levels of society, but... Um, actually, I've forgotten where I was going with this, but I'm sure it was a really good point.

I think I've written about that before, but I feel like Sorkin did an interesting job on TSN because he portrayed the world through the eyes of male characters whose rise took place in environments that were - in real life - incredibly misogynistic; and thus the portrayal of women is committed to that vantage point.

What worked for me and apparently didn't for all spectators is that I definitely felt the director judgmental gaze on his main cast throughout the movie, an incredibly negative gaze which thus condemns the way they see and treat women.

Well that was (kind of) Sorkin's counter-argument. He never said it was the world seen through their eyes, as obviously there are female characters in the film that aren't seen through their eyes, but he did say it was the world that the entrepreneurial tech-nerds were living in. The thing is, of course, that when he says that he's referring to things like the "Fuck Truck" (which is/was apparently real). Obviously those women were shallow, and around the up-and-coming men for the prestige, fame, money, whatever. That's obvious. I'm not talking about those women, though, I'm talking about the smart intelligent women that were there. And those that were conspicuous by their absence. Zuckerberg is never really successfully put in his place by any of the women he confronts, despite being rude and obnoxious to all of them.

(FYI: Sorkin added the stuff about Zuckerberg blogging about Erica's bra size, and he exaggerated the FaceMash stuff, too. It wasn't just women who were being voted on for their "hotness", it was photos of men and women. Sorkin likes to say that Facebook was born out of a night of incredible misogyny, but most of it was actually added by him.)

I'm actually writing all this as I research it, so I could be wrong about this, but I'm prepared to guess I'm right. I felt that women in the TSN were incredibly under-represented, especially compared to the men -- who were busy being super-smart, building empires, and changing the world. Let's take a look at the two most prominent female characters that have already been mentioned:

Rashida Jones's character, the fictionalized junior associate on Zuckerberg's legal team, Marilyn. Is she a strong female character? A counterpoint to the strong men portrayed in the movie? Well, she's only in the meetings because her boss wanted her to sit on the deposition. She says she's only been practising law for 20 months and she's only there for the experience. She's not actually working on his case (she explains her particular speciality is picking Jury members) and isn't involved in the preparation of the settlement agreements. Hmm. Not a great start, given that most of the other female characters in the film are shallow bimbos who just want to give a blow job to someone who's rich.

Let's look at what little dialogue she had (out of the 30 lines she spoke):

MARYLIN, the attractive second year associate who’s on Mark’s

legal team is still sitting too...about four seats down from

Mark.

MARYLIN

The site got twenty-two hundred hits

within two hours?

MARK

(beat)

Thousand.

MARYLIN

What?

MARK

Twenty-two thousand.

MARYLIN

(pause--even)

Wow.

Can you imagine any of the male characters saying that dialogue? I can't. They'd immediately say something smart and snappy and Sorkin-esque. Sure, there needed to be a character who was wowed by the stats so the audience didn't miss the big number... but it's not a good start for her character :-/

The second time we see her:

MARYLIN, the young lawyer we met early on, comes in with a

plastic salad container in her hand and sits at the far end of

the table from MARK, who doesn’t acknowledge her.

MARYLIN

(after a moment)

You don’t want any lunch?

MARK

(beat)

No.

MARYLIN

You’re welcome to some salad.

MARK

No thank you.

MARYLIN

This must be hard.

MARK

Who are you?

MARYLIN

I’m Marylin Delpy, I introduced myself--

MARK

I mean what do you do?

MARYLIN

I’m a second year associate at the firm.

My boss wanted me to sit in on the

deposition phase.

Ok, so Mark is being obnoxious here, but how does she respond to that? Does she say, "Excuse me? Don't talk to me like that."? No. She just politely continues and doesn't stand up for herself.

She does get the final say on Zuckerberg, though, which was interesting, and that scene (her third and final one) definitely showed a stronger side to her character: "You're not an asshole, Mark. You're just trying so hard to be." It's a bit little too late for me, though, seeing how it's the final line of the movie.

What about Rooney Mara, the fictionalized Erica Albright. In the opening scene, Zuckerberg runs circles around her and belittles her for going to a lesser University than him. As he sees it, she's going nowhere. Compared to him, she's nothing really -- she doesn't even need to study. There's no point for her. Yes, she dumps him, but that scene plays like she does it because he's hurt her, not because (as anyone can plainly see) he's a complete asshole (although that is the reason she gives).

So is Zuckerberg's assessment of her right? Is she really going nowhere? Does she really lack drive and ambition? Hmm. She's only in two more scenes in the movie: The next one is of her being humiliated, not only by what Zuckerberg has written about her on the internet, but by a stoned dorm guy making a crack about her bra size. How does she react? We don't know. All we see is her being humiliated.

In her third (and final) scene, she's in a bar with friends and Zuckerberg comes up, apparently attempting to apologize. She’s understandably upset with him for what he did, but the scene plays so we feel sorry for HIM -- because she's refusing to talk to him.

And that's that. That's the entirety of the major female characters represented in The Social Network (aside from the bimbo party girls, of course). I'm sorry, but that's not enough. You're telling me that in all that time, in the years portrayed in the movie, there isn't a single strong-minded woman who crossed Zuckerberg's path? He met a ton of men who could go toe-to-toe with him, but no women? (What about the women Argobot pointed out, the ones who helped create Facebook?)

I'm not saying Sorkin is misogynistic. I'm not saying it's a badly written script (I think it's actually brilliant in terms of structure and dialogue). But is it socially aware? Nope. To me its portrayal of women is pretty much inexcusable... And it wouldn't have taken hardly a thing to address that imbalance, which sadly just makes it worse.

So I don’t really buy Sorkin’s explanation, but I might buy his sincerity. (That said, he's posted some pretty shitty things in the past, so I’m not completely sure what he's like in person.)

Anyways, Elizabeth's boobs...

[vimes]

Video games? How about life in general. Seem to remember Thor with his shirt off. People joking about Robert Downey Jr. as Stark "He shoots sexy beams."

A few that I can think of include Kratos, Monkey (from Enslaved), Thane, Big Boss, Kain... and Raziel in vampire form now that I think about it, Dante and the Prince (of Persia).

OK. Thor, Dante, Vamp (probably Raiden too) and to a certain extent The Prince are valid examples because they are the male transcriptions of the sort of one dimensional representation of women we were talking about.

So I was wrong about that; there are indeed male incarnations of that sort of view.

Still, the other characters you mention - Kratos, Monkey, Kain - give of a different vibe because they are 'generally' more fleshed out that their female counterparts; their dynamics and appeal as characters rarely hinge on their 'shirtlessness' alone.

Of course, that's the objective here. Sales. There's people who are offended and who aren't offended. Great, you disagree, wonderful! There's no discussion there, except getting to tell your opinion to people. I guess that's entertainment in of itself though.

That's rich: if you were so convinced that sharing an opinion for the sake of it is worthless, you probably wouldn't have posted a 10 line answer about how it's your opinion that this discussion shouldn't even exist.

You're entitled to regard this discussion as futile, but you've got no basis to label me (and I figure others) as conceited wankers with too much times on their hands because we're talking about a topic you can't relate to; yet still somehow post about.

And by the way, maybe you don't, but I get offended by the fact that creators and/or marketing people think that Video game and mainstream entertainment should only be so base as to only appeal to our reptilian brain or whatever stereotypes have been arbitrarily maintained for the last millenia, and I get pissed of by people who throw their arms in the air and go "It sells; mystery solved!" and get snarky when people still want to continue digging in the topic.

I know this paragraph is useless rage, but fuck it, I and others had the honesty to listen to contradictory opinions and have an actual dialog, so I'm not going to be told by somebody who drops in nonchalantly that this discussion is irrelevant

Again, though, that feels rather off topic.

Yep, you're right, sorry about that - the tone of Frenetic Pony's post, just ticked me off.

So. Bioshock Infinite: will it allow us to not kill everybody everywhere this time around?

[vimes]

I'm not saying Sorkin is misogynistic. I'm not saying it's a badly written script (I think it's actually brilliant in terms of structure and dialogue). But is it socially aware? Nope. To me its portrayal of women is pretty much inexcusable... And it wouldn't have taken hardly a thing to address that imbalance, which sadly just makes it worse.

So I don’t really buy Sorkin’s explanation, but I might buy his sincerity. (That said, he's posted some pretty shitty things in the past, so I’m not completely sure what he's like in person.)

Anyways, Elizabeth's boobs...

That's a cool rundown of the movie, thanks.

You're probably right; but I don't think that I would have been particularly impressed if Sorkin had had a single woman stand up to the mysoginy of the character just for correctness sake.

I still think that it is a stronger statement to have those horrible people succeed in their endeavour and being admired by stranger despite their lack of empathy to other people. Call it artistic licence. I think that Mark is an asshole (in the movie at least) and I think that, beside fleeting feelings of loneliness displayed at the end, he is happy. Once he's back at his facebook office, he'll be OK, which is pathetic and horrible.

The last statement from Marylin really sounded to me like an explanation of how society can still humor that sort of behavior; she, after all, doesn't really know anything about him at that point but his ready to give him some salvation.

Given our previous conversation on Allen, I expect that you would rather have the movie inspire to standup to mysoginy. I understand that but I'm personally more in line with the cynical arc of event that Sorking chose to describe. At least for this one movie.

[ThunderPeel2001]

No, I totally agree that the film should portray those guys as they are and show the success they achieved. I wasn't suggesting the film needed a "Hollywood Ending", or even some kind of flawless female character to put them in their place. Absolutely not! I totally agree that it's more powerful to show how people like that can succeed, no matter how much of an asshole they are. What I'm saying is just a matter of realism and balance.

For example, if there were two characters in the movie who were black, and they both were portrayed in stereotypes, and there were no other black characters, and all the white characters were realistic and well-rounded, you'd kind of have to stop and go, "Hang on a minute...?". It just seems highly unlikely (and indeed, according to Argobot, it's completely fictitious) that Zuckerberg wouldn't have been working with some incredibly smart and incredibly motivated women. The fact that the film chose only portray all its female characters in a certain way, while showing all its male characters in another way, is an artistic choice... and a dubious one. (However unintentional.)

Even Sorkin can see and understand what's been said about his script. That's why, instead of insisting it wasn't there, he tried to give an explanation as to why it was there. But as I've pointed out, his explanation doesn't ring true (to me, at least).

[vimes]

Yeah, my lack of knowledge about the Ivy League and Silicon Valley of the early 00s probably betrays me: I really bought into the idea that those institutions were still hugely discriminating against intelligent / entrepreunarial women. Hence the lack thereof.

Damn you Sorkin, for making sweeping baseless statements believable!

If the movie wasn't using real world stories, this probably should be more acceptable; but yeah, since it invokes real names and places, I can see it being disturbing.

[brkl]

Oh, man, that first conversation with Marylin. I had forgotten it, but I remember how it hit me when I saw it. A smart, young lawyer in awe of how many hits her asshole nerd client's website got!? Never. Just never.

[Argobot]

Frankly that seems to be more of a problem than sexualizing women. Men get sexualized, how many white male protagonists are muscular and take their shirt off and etc.? But of course, the vast majority of men don't feel victimized as such. Surprisingly, a large portion of women don't feel victimized by being portrayed as sexy either. What's wrong with having an idle daydream about empathizing with someone who's better looking than you, or appreciating the attractiveness of others?

But there IS a section of women, far larger than men, that do feel "victimized" or some such similar word by this and call it "exploitation". And certainly that line of "exploitation" is a huge fuzzy section of spectrum as to where it crosses according to most people. But taking into account the "lack of interesting female characters" first, if just as a thought towards sales alone, seems at least as important as any conversation about physical portrayal and what seems ultimately to be largely a disagreement about personal preference over such.

I don't know, I think you'd be surprised at the number of women (and men!) who are dissatisfied with the way both genders are represented in mainstream media. The portrayal of women is just discussed more because they are so underrepresented, and are fair less likely to have any depth of character outside of their appearance. I agree that sometimes men are not fairly represented either, especially in video games where they tend to be hyper-masculinized to the point of farce. It's not a zero-sum conversation though, it is possible to discuss how women and men are poorly represented in our culture, there's no need to pick sides.

But anyway, Bioshock. Despite some of the issues that have come up around, this game still looks pretty good! I will probably preorder it.

[Sno]

I mean I agree that they shouldn't have let creative concerns be superseded by marketing/economic ones, but that's the decision that Irrational made and I think they should stick by it. Having a fan poll for a reversible cover is just putting a band aid on a much larger problem of how games are marketed.

Maybe you have a point, but this isn't a dangerous precedent, fan-voted reversible covers are already a very common practice. If you've ever bought a game that has had a reversible cover, the odds are that there was a forum poll somewhere to appease somebody. Hell, the cover of the Collector's Edition for the first BIoShock was even fan-voted.

It's not influence over the game, it's not even influence over the marketing, it's something that only fans will notice. It's so they can have something pretty to look at on their shelves and feel like they made their point.

There's a big gulf between this and EA changing the ending of ME3.

[Gwardinen]

It's not a zero-sum conversation though, it is possible to discuss how women and men are poorly represented in our culture, there's no need to pick sides.

Just kind of quoting this for emphasis. I couldn't agree more and I liked the part of the Feminism thread that evinced the opinion that feminism isn't really about promoting women's rights in the same way that oncologists aren't really doctors who exist to drug and irradiate their patients. Much like oncologists are doctors who fight cancer, and chemotherapy and radiotherapy are just the fronts on which they fight at this time, feminists could (and hopefully should) be viewed as people who fight inequality and women's lack of parity is just the symptom they happen to be combating at the moment. It's etymologically suspect, but I like the philosophy behind that definition.

Sorkin... man, I wish I had something to contribute to the discussion about his work because it really interests me. I freely admit he's one of my favourite writers, and I adored the Social Network and (as far as I know) every TV series he's ever made. That said, the guy says some weird shit sometimes. Particularly around the Newsroom, there have been some very strange intimations that he would like to go back to the age when men were men and America was the promised land. I dunno... it's made me kind of uncomfortable and has me questioning the sentiments I so responded to in things like the West Wing. As has been pointed out, the women in that show were almost always competent, intelligent and well-rounded. Also, they did not all have the same personality! So yeah, I love Sorkin's work but in recent times I've been getting a little worried by what kind of a guy he might actually be.

As for Infinite, it seems like rather a token gesture to do the reversible cover, but it doesn't seem like a bad one. Giving customers the option to have a slightly more customised (at least through the medium of voting and then being able to turn the cover) box doesn't strike me as anything but a good thing. It just also doesn't really matter. The cover is still the cover and it's the cover for marketing reasons, which entirely makes sense. It's just a shame that it looks kind of dumb and doesn't say very much about the game.

[castorp]

Men in media get sexualized as well, I mean they are shirtless and have lots of muscles, so why do women cry about it and men don't.

Please stop muddling up those two kinds of misrepresentation and acting as if the existence of the one negates the validity of complaint against the other. It is not the same!

As said, those examples are power fantasies for men, they were not created for women to masturbate to cater to their base instincts. Then those roles are surrounded by thousands of other roles men (are allowed to) play - the problem is that the range of roles for women - the mere quantity as well - is a lot smaller, there the one-dimensional sexualized/weak/devote/dumb is rather the norm.

When I see Kratos I might think, boy, I'm inadequate in light of his hyper-masculinty - but no, actually not, it is supposed to be 'hyper' after all, he is in charge and everything - I want to be like him. And honestly, I don't have to think about that, I just turn on the TV and watch a sitcom, where fat ugly men are together with the prettiest girls.

For women (I can only imagine), oh, for the creators of this game women are sex toys for the god of war, lets see, comics, yeah, the good old T'n'A-contortions, lets watch a chick-flick, or rather go to the book-store, woman-section, learn how to work out or cook or make my (man's) home prettier, oh, hey Jade, nice camera, I like you, mh, hey Elizabeth, nice tits.

And as said, this misrepresentation of men should rather be reason to speak out against it as well and not to silence or devalue the discussion on the issue of women in media.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Nicely put, Mr Castorp!

[Thrik]

BioShock Infinite's Elizabeth: Ken Levine on creating the best AI companion since Half-Life 2's Alyx Vance

[melmer]

Gigadity gigadity

(i'm actually deeply embarrassed about having this image on my screen at work, scroll quicklyyy)

[melmer]

There seems to be a never ending supply of interviews and previews running at the moment, seems like everyone and their mother has played the first 3-4 hours (including Jonathan Ross for some reason)

I don't want to read any of it, i want to be infinitely unspoilt (see what i did there )

Just read the article, explains why she has giant over exaggerated features...so you can see her facial expressions from a distance.

So what was so good about Alyx Vance? i don't really remember her doing much... Which is probably a good thing as if she was constantly getting in my way i'd sure to remember her for all the wrong reasons

[Thrik]

She looks a lot better now than in that early depiction IMO. She looked positively horrendous there, whereas now at least she looks somewhat cute. Smaller tits too, and covered up in at least one shot.

[Thrik]

In other news, did anyone ever try out the nude cheat in Max Payne 2? What a game.

[melmer]

[Chris]

now at least she looks somewhat cute

It'll be nice when this isn't a usual requirement for fictional women in mass media. There are plenty of male supporting roles in all kinds of media in which you would much more readily describe the look of the actor (or animated representation, etc.) as "interesting" rather than "handsome" (someone like Steve Buscemi, for example, whose rules generally highlight, rather than downplay, his quirky facial features). It's hardly an option at all for female characters to be anything other than cute or beautiful.

[Argobot]

But that were to happen, and mainstream media was finally able to admit that women have different modes besides sexy and even more sexy, then we'd miss out on totally awesome stuff like this:

http://www.complex.com/video-games/2012/12/the-11-best-asses-in-video-games/

[ThunderPeel2001]

I love how that website is called "ComplexGaming".