gender studies – My Life, or Something Like It

Keeping our Interest

There are a lot of methods that developers use to gain and maintain our interest in video games. Further still, there are external elements at work that also serve to drive us more into our games, as much as there are forces trying to drive us away. The network is as complex as it is interesting.

One of the first ways developers may gain our interest in their video game products, be the game itself or the method for playing the game (e.g. console, proprietary software, etc.). In many cases, especially in today’s market, a player’s decision about a title might be made up before they even have the game in their hands. Advertisements, reviews, unboxing videos, games conventions–all of them are driving people towards the socially agreed upon games for people to play. What’s the hottest ticket this year? What’s the new DLC for that EA game? What collector’s editions have the shiniest inclusions? What did that top Twitch streamer give special item drops for watching their stream?

Further still, advertisements and community driven conversations surrounding games are only part of this puzzle. Marketing and developer teams also try to appeal to whatever markets they perceive as being the most viable. At E3 this year, I remember reading a number of stories and news posts about angry Twitter or Facebook users criticizing the ongoing inclusion of female protagonists as within upcoming titles as a travesty, particularly when players would be unable to choose a male protagonist, or if players thought it wasn’t “accurate,” as happened with EA’s backlash for Battlefield V. Despite the increased perception of female protagonists, according to Polygon’s post, the numbers aren’t actually changing all that much:

When a game features a set female protagonist, every player who enters those worlds must experience them through the lens of whoever the female protagonist might be. These games work to normalize the notion that male players should be able to project themselves onto and identify with female protagonists just as female players have always projected ourselves onto and identified with male protagonists.

A lot of vocal male gamers react to this because their identity is tied up with the role they live, but also the roles they play in their video games. It’s perceived as being so intertwined, in fact, that while these individuals may have chosen to play a female or male character before, the act of being “forced” to play from the female perspective, is somehow an affront to them personally. Nevermind that FemShep from the original Mass Effect trilogy was obviously the better cannon choice…but I digress.

Before we even get our hands on the games, people are already being told what they can, cannot, should, or should not be playing. It’s tied up in people’s identities, and threaten’s some individual’s perception of their flow (Isbister 5), their immersion, if it doesn’t match what they believe it should be. Even though, that flow isn’t broken by say, playing a bright blue super-fast hedgehog in the curvy streets of Metropolis (or perhaps that’s because he’s male?). Play helps to perform acts “of bonding, including the exhibition and validation or parody of membership and traditions in a community” (Flanagan 5), which subsequently helps to reinforce and create community, as well as to stand up against or alongside social norms. When the group identity is called into question by the identity of our game’s protagonists, turmoil erupts. However, engagement does not necessarily cease here, but rather is transformed. Rather than direct play with the game itself, would-be players become embroiled with anger against the creation of their perceived abomination–there interest is oft maintained, even if in…different circumstances.

Conversely, the broadening and redefining of our social norms helps to provide better representation, to allow new communities to grow and become enthralled with a video game’s world. Representation matters, and while I probably still would have played the original Mass Effect trilogy, I don’t think I would have been as emotionally invested in the story, my decisions, or the future of the galaxy, had it not been for FemShep. Similarly, every chance I get, be it Dragon Age, Skyrim, Oblivion, World of Warcraft…pretty much every adventure or action RPG I’m given the option to play a female character, I will. I see myself in those roles, and I play my characters accordingly. It’s not that non-male individuals can’t get hyped about playing as male characters in our video games, quite the contrary. However, we might not see ourselves as the characters we play, as much as our male counterparts might. Individuals may become less invested in video games in general, become withdrawn from the community and advertisements already not targeted at them, and the prophecy becomes self-fulfilled.

The original Mass Effect trilogy was one of my favourite series, possibly of all time. Not only because the storyline was amazing, the world was stellar (pun intended), the voice acting, and music were superb, but also because for the first time in my already-then some twelve to fifteen years of gaming, I was finally able to really play myself. I made all of the Paragon decisions, not just because I wanted to play that role, but because I knew that’s how I would have responded in those situations. It was the truest essence of roleplay, something I had enjoyed doing in a pen-and-pencil environment, come to life in full voice-acted splendour. I carried this motif the whole way through, I made the hard decisions, I felt the struggles, and I was fully immersed in the entire journey.

At one point, for the achievements, I decided to try to go back and play the Renegade options, starting at Mass Effect 2. Suffice to say, I found it impossible. Even following the creation of my own mythos that my Sheppard was lost at the end of Mass Effect 1, and this ME2-alternative Sheppard was a miswired-during-revival version, I still couldn’t bring myself to play that kind of role. To this day, I still do not have those achievements.

In this way, the virtual worlds we visit are no less complex than the one our physical forms inhabit. “Within the culture of computer games, race, ethnicity, language, and identity relations including gender emerge as complex and contradictory…In Western countries, computer games are still perceived as an arena created by and for white men…” (Flanagan 225). She continues to discuss the specifics of a number of games and genres, namely the false dichotomy of “casual” female gamers and “hardcore” male gamers. She suggests that designers “…have yet to grapple with the full range of inequities ingrained in the player categories and game models exhibited in most of today’s games” (225). Though, despite the backlash they continue to receive, we do see this trend slowly starting to change. Despite the ongoing sexist environment within the industry for some, there yet remains hope, and an ongoing push for developers, and players, to do better. For just as soon as there’s no female representation, the tide can change just that quickly.

In the words of EA, “either accept it, or don’t buy the game.” As our video games are reflections of our societal norms, and of our own identities, emotions become heated when beliefs are challenged. Conversely, because they are reflections of our society, it looks good on the industry, and on gamer culture more broadly, to see these kinds of changes take place. Players are engaged and invested because they see themselves in the worlds they explore (Hart 2017). If we take the simulated play theory to be true, the better equipped players are at learning different kinds of worlds to live in, perhaps one with more accessible and even representation, the better adept they will be at living in them.

After all, play is ultimately a social venture, right? [Part 3]

– Flanagan, Mary. (2009) Critical Play.
– Hart, Casey (2017) Getting Into the Game: An Examination of Player Personality Projection in Videogame Avatars (Game Studies)
– Isbister, Katherine (2016) How Games Move Us

Through the Looking Glass

Popular media often serve as a reflection through which we view culture. Like mirrors at a funhouse, they can distort as much as they can show true. We’ve talked about it in class, and I’ve otherwise previously discussed on this blog (here and here), how pulp magazines can be interpreted as presenting a certain way of enacting American life. A very particular way of being a ‘proper’ citizen. As much as the stories, characters, visuals, and advertisments served to train a population to see the world a certain way, so too did the stories, characters, visuals, and advertisments reflect aspects of the world that already existed.

This week, we read topics on gender and race depiction in pulp magazines. While we have discussed these themes throughout the course, this week they take primary focus.

1889n4og4e6c5jpg — A mural from *BioShock Infinite*, featuring racial stereotypes of ‘undesireables’ and ‘societal moochers,’ that “proper” citizens of the game’s flying city of Columbia are supposed to protect against. This echoes a general theme of racist representations throughout the game, associated with the dominant white and affluent citizen body.

Nathan Madison explores racism in pulp magazines thoroughly in Anti-Foreign Imagery in American Pulps and Comic Books, 1920-1960. In particular, we read about “The Yellow Peril,” or rather the representation of stereotypes and orientalism within the covers of 1919 and 1935’s pulp magazines. Some of the imagery and quotations are quite jarring and unfortunately illuminating, not only for the cultures of the time, but also how long-lasting the tropes were. Towards the end of the chapter, Madison revisits the political nature of anti-foreign (particularly Chinese) climate surrounding these magazines from 1882-1930s. Laws prohibiting inter-race marriage, revoking citizenship from American women who ‘dared’ marry a Chinese man, limits to Chinese immigration.

He states on page 83:

In such an atmosphere, what do the stories found in the pulp magazines of the 1920s and the 1930s tell us about Americans, and, specifically, about their views of Asians and foreigners in general? It is difficult, and rash, to simply assign racism to such a time period that differs from the current in so many ways. One reason for this difficulty, aside from the error of attempting to impose early twenty-first century political correctness upon those living in the early twentieth century, is the contradicting evidence of racial tolerance, and even racial acceptance, on the part of many Americans at the time. For every act of the federal government that attempted to impose immigration restrictions, there was an outcry from many denouncing the racial intolerance such acts legalized.

Continually we return to the complex nature of history and scholarship. It is not enough to simply see these works and stories as reflections of rampant racism at the time. However, as Madison points out, the tendancies were there. It is hard to judge the past based on the morals of the present, and yet in many cases, I would argue, we should. As much as it ‘was different’ in their time, it does not mean we should forgive and forget what happened. In many cases these very damaging stereotypes and racial beliefs created an indoctrinating effect on the populace which persists to this day in many, albiet sometimes more subtle, ways. Amongst the stories that perpetuated the “yellow peril” within the pulps, others did try to subvert it, even to the point of having Chinese protagonists, even if stories like these were more rare.

world-war-2-propaganda — World War II Propaganda Poster

What concerns me about this side of pulp magazines is the overt propagandan nature of “yellow peril” narratives. Madison ends the chapter discussing how the discussion of “yellow” versus “white” races changes leading into World War II, thanks in part to a shift in a percieved gobal villain. He notes, however, that the legacy of this time continues much longer after the fact. We see the effect of orientalism repeat through a variety of funhouse mirrors throughout history, as people from the psudo-mythological East are demonized or exoticised to promote the master-narrative, especially in the contemporary U.S.A. these days. Propaganda narratives like the “yellow peril” catch like wildfire in cultural memory and have damaging effects on the landscape. When everything around you, from the news, to advertisements, to the entertainment you consume, tells a different version of the same story, it becomes increasingly difficult to fight against it.

It’s insidious as hell, and exactly why diverse opinions and representations continue to be important in media, and in scholarship.

Today is International Women’s Day, and I cannot fathom closing out this post without briefly mentioning the looking glass mirrors of gender roles in pulp magazines. That being said, I’ll be brief, as I’ve talked about gender roles briefly before.

Much like racial tropes and stereotypes, the representation of gender roles and “types” of women are equally present within pulp magazines. While there are examples of women who break the mold, often women serve as narrative elements, part of the backdrop to serve the story’s progression. Object of affection, of scandal, of motherhood…representations of women in pulp magazines echo a much longer history of one dimensional or restricted depictions that women continue to fight against today. What I did find interesting in this week’s readings, however, was the fact that many of the writers and editors of the “girlie” pulp mags were in fact women themselves. While it is less shocking to read that women also made up a sizeable portion of the readership, I am curious as to the motivations of these women to participate in these kinds of narratives. I don’t care for the ‘morality’ of their involvement, but rather the desire to perpetuate stories of women they knew weren’t wholly true? Sex sells as they say, and I suppose writing as ‘an insider’ would provide that extra oompf that would rack in additional sales. Alas, as is pointed out, little about the authors and editors themselves is known, and tracking down any motivations for their involvement is unlikely.

All that being said, I get a kick out of the list of “do’s and don’t’s” for writing into Spicy Detective. “A nude female corpse is allowed, of course.” Naturally.

Screenshot 2018-03-09 at 12.46.35 AM — *Pulp Magazines Project –* “Birth of Girlie Pulps“

The sad part is, while things are changing in contemporary media, they haven’t changed all that much. Here’s hoping that as consumers of media, and as scholars, we can do better, with both race and gender.

Gendering History

If you’ve even dabbled into the discussion of gender and history, you’ve more than likely stumbled by a mention of a lack of female representation in the documented past. It’s something that’s come up in pretty much every course that deals with the past throughout university. Documentaion of women’s affect and even their presence in history is lacking because they just weren’t the ones who were writing it down.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Women were writing, and they were participating in documentation, but not quite as much as their male colleagues. Additionally, it was only usually women of power or money who had any time or ability to write anything at all. We see this even as early as with Sappho, the ancient Greek poet. She was a wealthy citizen, and as a result, had the privilege to leisure time and thus was able to write. While there are very few documented female voices in history, there are even fewer of the average women who would have lived alongside their much more represented male counterparts. Even when women may have written their perspective, carved their story, or have been celebrated in their time, historians have traditionally washed away female participation from the record. Anything which presents women as vocal individuals in their own right, in their own lens, detracts from the male domination narrative you see.

It’s not all that cut and dry, however, as there are plenty of women’s studies and history classes to teach the messiness of such a subject. Where we can tackle however, is something that we discussed in class this week, namely the male-washing of the Western genre. While industrialization allowed for more and more women to gain access to reading and writing, the legacy of their participation in the literary market would go overlooked.

As we discussed in class, the Western genre in its earliest days, when looking at the pulp magazines themselves, had high female engagement. Not just in reading either. Women were writing stories too. While scholarship on Westerns focused on literary sources, skewed towards male authors, the truth remained that the Western genre developed through simultaneous and mutual involvement in the genre. It’s no surprise that in the 1950s and 60s, eras desperately trying to embolden gender roles against an influx of new thinking, that scholarship would erase the presence of female participation. Naturally, it would seem to them, women would have come to the genre only for the romance. Women didn’t want to see the guns or action stories, nay (or perhaps neigh), they only wanted to read about stories where subservient (or perhaps wild-then-tamed) women fall in love with dominent men and start a new life in the West. They couldn’t possibly be interested in the same “men” stuff *insert chest bump here*.

Does my sarcasm read strong enough? It’s so incredibly infurating as an academic to look back and be faced with misled and unfounded historical scholarship. We are now taught to look at the entire picture. To preserve all that we can about a text or an artifact, in hopes that even if we can’t analyze the whole picture, someone, someday, might. When faced with situations like this, one cannot help but be infurated by the scholarship of dominant male authorities, which changed official analysis of history to fit their own goals. Nevermind that the female-driven/written pulps lasted longer than their guns-blazing counterparts. Nevermind that the blended magazines came first. Nevermind that women had any active role whatsoever.

I regret that I’m getting fired up about this more than I intended to, but it strike a chord with me. I have, thanks to my training through a very forward-thinking parent, I’ve always grated against imposed gender roles. Why should boys get all the fun stuff? Women have always been interested in things beyond romance and beautification, but because gender roles (albiet ever shifting) shame them for it, they either train themselves not to be interested, or find an excuse for something societally acceptable within them to like. It makes me hurt, not only for contemporary audiences and issues, but also for the women in history who have had their voices silenced or ignored–or worse yet, attributed to a male counterpart. There is a place for everyone in this analysis, in this field, and it’s up to us to go back and return life to those who we can find within these pages. To give back credit where it is due, and to change scholarship on history to better represent the truth of gender (and race) participation.

I’ve visually referenced Westworld twice in this post–a brilliant TV show (which if you haven’t watched it, stop, drop, and binge it all right now), created by the joint efforts of a male and a female, produced by a female, and containing an amazing cast of strong-willed, well rounded, and well-written female characters. In the sci-fi/western/drama category, it’s everything an inclusive audience should want, and it’s no wonder it was critically recieved accordingly. It deals with complex issues of romance, action, drama, abuse, artificial intelligence, ethics, free will, and consumerism (alongside so much else), against a backdrop of stunning visuals, breathtaking sets, and a moving score. It’s a show, for me, which proves that Westerns can be for everyone (well, except maybe not kids in this case). I can only imagine, that in the age of pulp magazines, a well written Western would have the same effect on its audience as Westworld has today. A good story need a blend of a variety of elements, and the best way to accomplish that would have been to incorporate blended perspectives and angles into a magazine.

If for nothing else, the lesson of male-washed Western genre scholarship calls for us to use a critical eye when looking at other pulp magazine genres, as well as literature more broadly. Just because it’s not obvious, or its been overwritten, doesn’t mean female voices aren’t there–that female participation isn’t there. Sometimes you just need to dig a little deeper, find meaning in the blank spaces, and help to try and uncover what history has tried to erase. We cannot hope to move foward in our own scholarship, if we continue to accept ingrained and perpetuated biases about the people we study.

The cycle has to end somewhere, why not with us?