222: Dude Looks Like a Lady

[Harbinger_]

Because she doesn't wear a skirt and have long hair. (Which would encumber a rogue which is what she seems to be) she is automatically assumed to be gender confused or a transvestite? Seriously I thought we were pass gender stereotypes by this day in age. Boy was I wrong.

 

[Noone From Nowhere]

The Legend of Zelda series has taken further strides into the territory which Shiek pioneered (if you are going to ignore/are unaware of King/Queen Junon from the Sega's DragonForce)with the introduction of waifish tomboy Tetra and the dark imp Midna (this article itself is a massive spoiler, so you should have already known that this isn't the place for you if you want something in the LoZ series kept secret until you play the games!).

These characters are a good start, but that is all that they are. Not only are all of these princesses supporting cast to the standard pretty boy, they are left behind in term of progress for the 'Power Princess' role by the likes of Xena (Warrior Princess is right in her title, for Goddess' sake!), Princess Peach (in Super Princess Peach. 'Super'! Does it get better than that? Ask the Mario Brothers about it!)or even She-Ra, Princess of Power (back in the '80s!).

Why settle for gender neutral characters when videogames deal with sci-fi, fantasy or 'phantasy' (like Fantasy...IN SPACE!)themes all of the time? Why not shoot for a gender inclusive character? Hermaphrodites are way past due in games. Everyone can empathize with them...partially. Then again, that means that everyone is equally unable to empathize with them. Sounds perfect to me!

Even slice-of-life games would be a whole new experience with hermaphroditic characters in the lead.
Shopping trips at super stores for tampons,panties and athletic supporters; fatherhood if your character hooks up with a female and motherhood if same said charcter knows a male (possibly at the same time?); or even trying to find proper housing when enlisting into the military, enrolling in college or being incarcerated in prison; etctera, it would all be fair game.
Why should players have to choose male or female? I'd rather pick a third option!

Then again, if a simple semi-subversion of a single gender-related fictional convention still blows minds and gay characters are still threatning (or hot, depending upon the gender of the viewer/complainer at the moment), that could be too much to hope for, too soon.

Both game makers and gamers could use a heaping helping of imagination and a sense of adventure.

[Maybe I just say this because I didn't even notice or care that Mulan...I mean Sheik...was supposed to be shocking at the time. I guess that I'm too far outside of the mainstream in the USA for it to even register. I'll leave if that's a good thing or a bad thing for others to figure out.]

 

[wolfy098]

Boy and girl and fairy save world from legion of Men with big eyebrows simple.....

plus on the battlefeild it matters not whether you are man or woman so long as you can fight
therefore sex was irrelevant

 

[Wolcik]

If princess was able to free herself then she wouldn't be imprisoned in the first place. Zelda games suppose to be placed in times when there was no such thing as "sexizm" and it was OK to have sex with 13 years old girl

 

[vxicepickxv]

Sheik is a chick a kick ass chick but still female
it's also should be noticed that in TP she is devoid of pink and waering boots
Nintendo also created bad ass chick #1 Samus Aran

I'd also like to point out that Nintendo wasn't the only gaming company to make the lead character a female either. In the game Faria the main character was a female, who oddly enough, had to rescue a princess from a dungeon. Of course, you don't actually find this out until AFTER you rescue the princess. Not that more than 3 or 4 people in the world have actually played the game.

 

[bobknowsall]

Worst piece of dull garbage I've read on the Escapist yet.

Critical Research Failure.

Explain.

"to be female is to be a captive", plus making gigantic leaps of speculation. Most likely putting more thought into it than Nintendo, seeing it's basically a rehash of the old damsel in distress.

Name the "huge leaps of speculation", please. And they're talking about the archetype of the "damsel in distress", and how most female characters in gaming are weak and passive. They're not insulting women, they're just pointing out a pretty obvious clichè.

 

[cobra_ky]

Because she doesn't wear a skirt and have long hair. (Which would encumber a rogue which is what she seems to be) she is automatically assumed to be gender confused or a transvestite? Seriously I thought we were pass gender stereotypes by this day in age. Boy was I wrong.

the point isn't that she's gender-confused. the point is that she consciously adopted a more masculine identity in order to defy gender roles. Zelda/Sheik is no more gender-confused than Joan D'Arc was.

 

[insanelich]

Worst piece of dull garbage I've read on the Escapist yet.

Critical Research Failure.

Explain.

"to be female is to be a captive", plus making gigantic leaps of speculation. Most likely putting more thought into it than Nintendo, seeing it's basically a rehash of the old damsel in distress.

Name the "huge leaps of speculation", please. And they're talking about the archetype of the "damsel in distress", and how most female characters in gaming are weak and passive. They're not insulting women, they're just pointing out a pretty obvious clichè.

Assuming Nintendo meant anything by it other than just giving Zelda a disguise.

Also, "they're"?

And yes, it's a cliché, but not all female characters in gaming are weak and passive - and somehow it doesn't seem to repeat other than with females that actually there's a valid reason to capture.

Also, saying Zelda/Sheik is gender-confused OR intentionally defying gender roles is silly and has very little supporting it. It's a disguise, it's supposed to make you hard to recognize.

 

[Harbinger_]

Because she doesn't wear a skirt and have long hair. (Which would encumber a rogue which is what she seems to be) she is automatically assumed to be gender confused or a transvestite? Seriously I thought we were pass gender stereotypes by this day in age. Boy was I wrong.

the point isn't that she's gender-confused. the point is that she consciously adopted a more masculine identity in order to defy gender roles. Zelda/Sheik is no more gender-confused than Joan D'Arc was.

In what way is cutting your hair, taking the fight to the enemy and wearing clothes that you won't easily trip over more masculine? I'm fairly certain there was also nothing in the game that said she was trying to defy gender roles. She wasn't a suffragette she was forced into exile and to fend for herself.

 

[Yukichin]

This was interesting, but I really think that it read too much into it. Sheik was a guy in Ocarina of Time simply to make it less obvious that it was Zelda, so she could hide.

 

[Gyrefalcon]

Also the line "What fun is a princess who saves herself?", it's not so much that you do it to save Zelda, you save Zelda to save Hyrule but if she could save herself you could then team up and destory Gannon...

I agree, you are supposed to be the hero of the land, not the hero of the princess. But Zelda represents the land in the same way as King Arthur did. And we no longer ascribe to the old princess stereotypes. We aren't dealing with issues of hemophilia or having to prove a maiden's purity to insure a false heir isn't born. There is still grace expected from them and noblesse oblige, but modern day princesses take up social causes and get involved with the people, as Princess Di did with AIDS patients.

Stories like "The Stepsister Scheme" cheerfully turns convention on its ear and has the princess rescuing the prince. Even the game Jade Empire has a princess running about and you don't feel redundant working with her. What fun is it? Plenty-as long as rescuing the princess is second to saving the world.

 

[Mr.Pandah]

When the game first came out, I was, what, 10 years old? 11? Tops, 12? I was open to a lot of ideas, since my mind was still easily impressionable. Seeing Sheik though, I instantly knew it was Zelda. Whether or not it was a man or a woman under those bandages/rags did not make him/her any less of an interesting character.

Sheik was a ninja in my eyes, thats all that mattered to me. S/he was cool. However, Sheik wasn't the girl I once knew, the one I was striving to save...S/he was the one saving me it seemed. Her skills, from what I could tell, far surpassed mine as Link. This was why when Zelda got captured by Ganon, that it wasn't a matter of "We can't have a transgender character." but more of a, "We need the princess, we need Wisdom, not another symbol of Courage." Link was being replaced by Sheik in my eyes, thats why, whatever magick was in play, had to be reversed in order for the story to continue.

At the end of it all though, I feel as if Sheik was more of a symbol of Hope/Courage for the people (whomever was left to see this symbol) in Hyrule, while Link was on his hiatus. Whether or not Sheik was a guy or a girl made no difference to the players, or the people of Hyrule. What they needed to see was that there wasn't only one hero to save the world. There wasn't only one person that could stand up against the Evil in the land. You weren't the be all end all hero for once. You were still, only human after all, and Sheik was the same, you both showed each other your mortality.

Thats how I feel about it at least.

 

[minoes]

If you wanted to talk about transexualism in games, you should have talked about Poison, Ebisumaru/Dr. Yang or Dr. Morpheus Duvall, not Zelda. If anything Zelda was "transgressing" her own role in ocarna of time.

 

[bobknowsall]

Worst piece of dull garbage I've read on the Escapist yet.

Critical Research Failure.

Explain.

"to be female is to be a captive", plus making gigantic leaps of speculation. Most likely putting more thought into it than Nintendo, seeing it's basically a rehash of the old damsel in distress.

Name the "huge leaps of speculation", please. And they're talking about the archetype of the "damsel in distress", and how most female characters in gaming are weak and passive. They're not insulting women, they're just pointing out a pretty obvious clichè.

Assuming Nintendo meant anything by it other than just giving Zelda a disguise.

Also, "they're"?

And yes, it's a cliché, but not all female characters in gaming are weak and passive - and somehow it doesn't seem to repeat other than with females that actually there's a valid reason to capture.

Also, saying Zelda/Sheik is gender-confused OR intentionally defying gender roles is silly and has very little supporting it. It's a disguise, it's supposed to make you hard to recognize.

They might well have meant there to be a subtext. Games might not be very intellectually stimulating, but that doesn't mean their writers and developers are oblivious to metaphor and subtext.

Yes, "they're". It's a contraction of the words "they" and "are", used in this context to mean "the writer is". It's grammatically sound.

I never said that all female characters are weak and passive, just the vast majority of them (Which you'll find to be somewhat true). I don't know, some female characters I've seen have their previously strong and decisive image derailed for some cheap pathos when the baddie captures them.

The fact that Sheik is referred to as male does show some defiance of gender roles, otherwise they would have just referred to her as a dude, surely? And the cross-dressing doesn't mean she's gender-confused (There are plenty of examples of fictional cross-dressing that have nothing to do with gender confusion. I'm sure TV Tropes has a few examples, and since you frequent it already they shouldn't be hard to find).

 

[Woem]

I would like to point out that a transexual has one gender, and is not "both and neither". For instance a transgender woman was born/labeled/assigned a male body at birth and transitioned to a gender role as a woman. So a transgender woman is a woman.

 

[scythepuppet]

The gender subversion is an interesting one that doesn't make it into Windwaker. Zelda as Tetra is the swashbucklette leader of a gang of pirates, and willfully contributes to Ganondorf's defeat with her light bow. She does double duty, of course, since she is captured (in what appears to be Ganondorf's bedroom, no less), but her struggle is never portrayed as masculine even as she fights.

Her appearance is more masculine as Tetra but only because she's wearing pants; without typical gender signifiers (such as colossal breasts and feminine garb) cartoon characters usually default to male.

 

[cobra_ky]

Because she doesn't wear a skirt and have long hair. (Which would encumber a rogue which is what she seems to be) she is automatically assumed to be gender confused or a transvestite? Seriously I thought we were pass gender stereotypes by this day in age. Boy was I wrong.

the point isn't that she's gender-confused. the point is that she consciously adopted a more masculine identity in order to defy gender roles. Zelda/Sheik is no more gender-confused than Joan D'Arc was.

In what way is cutting your hair, taking the fight to the enemy and wearing clothes that you won't easily trip over more masculine? I'm fairly certain there was also nothing in the game that said she was trying to defy gender roles. She wasn't a suffragette she was forced into exile and to fend for herself.

if you don't think short hair, aggressive behavior, and wearing pants are traditionally masculine traits, then i'm not sure what you consider gender roles to be.

 

[katsa5]

I think of Cammy White as being a balance of the two roles captive/ hero herself. Captive under another's influence (one of Bison's Dolls) yet she can take care of herself at the same time. She would be a princess that saves herself; hence why she's in a fighting game I suppose.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Huh. I would not not have thought of looking at Shiek/Zelda in this light, and I have reason to think about things like that, since you're implying something to do with trans... issues, which apply to me personally.

I will note that I've played a lot of Zelda games, and while the idea as a whole hasn't changed from the core of 'damsel in distress', there's been a definite change in behaviour and presentation.

Zelda has become more and more capable as the series progressed.

In 'A link to the past', Zelda is far more helpless than she is now.

In Twilight Princess not only does she fight alongside link at the end, but she also makes a reasonably convincing case for being the actual ruler of a country, rather than just someone that needs rescuing.
She's repeatedly shown holding a sword, though decides to surrender rather than fight...
It's actually a surprisingly powerful reflection of the idea of 'wisdom' over courage.
She surrenders because she feels it's better for the people of Hyrule than if she were to try and fight...