Anita Sarkeesian + Hitman Absolution = Epic Fail

[mrdude2010]

There is that spot in absolution where you have to use the body of a dead stripper to distract some guards. Well I guess you don't have to have to, but it is about the only way you can do that segment without getting shot at. You are kind of right in a factual way. The game dose punish you killing people, but I can't bring myself to defend the game on this ground. Taken as a whole, the game is very squick. Like I am thinking back to playing it and am feeling kind of sick about some of the content.


It is kind of possible to give every character a little bit of back story/personality. Games do it all the time with idle chat. It's not a lot, but when spent well it can lead to some neat characterizations. Oh and then watchdogs did that clever thing with the profiler. The kind of problem is that the idle chat for a stripper, or prostitute is all about them inviting you to be perverse. You know the stripper in GTA 5 even a fair amount of dialog. It's just all their dialog is about sex, so there is opportunity to give them character or a back story. They just don't.

You're not so much using it as a distraction as you are helping them find the body they're looking for.

I would say it's possible to give every character a little bit of back story/personality (the heart from Dishonored is another good example of this), but in some levels, there are just too many people for most of them to be anything other than a cut out. Would you complain about how underdeveloped and samey all the male patrons of the strip club are? I mean, a big part of good visual design is making the important bits stand out, and part of that is muting supporting characters in some settings.

As a side note, trying to talk to a stripper about her life outside of stripping is the quickest way to get your lap dance to end. They don't want to talk about their background, and they don't want you to either.

Hitman: Absolution is a pretty fucked up game, but I really can't quite call it overtly misogynistic. If you're going to portray part of a game taking part in a seedy underbelly, you have to actually show a seedy underbelly. Some of the biggest threats you face in the game are very well trained female professional assassins. Your incredibly capable handler was a female. That little girl you rescue kicks some serious ass.

 

[mrdude2010]

Well, let's look a bit broader. Why don't we start with the fact that there IS a strip club level in the first place. The game does not need to have a strip club level for the plot to progress,

One of your targets is an incredibly seedy and creepy dude. One of the easiest ways to show that is to show him running a traditionally sleazy type of place (a strip club) and doing creepy, seedy, things (abusing his workers). It makes it pretty easy to kill him, I think. I feel like accurately representing a seedy underbelly or fucked up circumstance is different from condoning or encouraging it. If the best way to make your point is by showing something ugly, then by all means, show something ugly. It's like the Far Cry 4 cover that got all that idiotic attention. They're not promoting being an oppressive colonialist, they're portraying him as the villain. They're not supporting his lifestyle, they're criticizing it.

 

[IceForce]

That little girl you rescue kicks some serious ass.

I wonder, does she still count as a damsel in distress, if she can do this?

 

[SeanBeanDies]

The same with Lara Croft, She's female Batman crossed with Indianna Jones but without being a neurotic mess. Yet mostly she's brushed off a sexist or simply a Male fantasy piece and nothing more.

Considering how badly most game characters get written I wouldn't be surprised if it was more writing issues than deliberate sleaze. Hell it could have been pretty progressive to have 47 hunted by a group of Female assassins and showing they were almost as capable as him despite his extensive trainning.

If they failed to come up with a reason for the clothing in the game itself (not sure I haven't played it myself yet) then it could be written off. If they didn't and it was a "Well we wanted them to look sexy" then you could argue there was an issue of sexism at work.

However again it's all about perspective.

I think the new Lara Croft in Tomb raider (2013) isn't at all sexist though, I'd like to hear your opinion her.

 

[Batou667]

Because sex workers are the epitome of dis-empowered. Many are slaves, many are the victims of sex trafficking, many have been forcibly hooked on drugs, and many have literally no other way to make money.

And society likes to treat them as scum and disposable for all that.

And lets make this poin t again, as you skipped over it - these characters are presented as sexualised and sex objects... Violence towards them brings in and uncomfortable element of sexualised violence, something which can bring in unfortunate and unpleasant undertones that really should not be there.

This is becoming more of a discussion about the morality of sex work in real life rather than the morality of depicting it in a video game - if you're (general you, not specific you) sex-negative like Ms Sarkeesian is, then hey, that's at least consistent, but I'd argue that it's futile and misdirected to rail against the harmless depiction of something that's happening right now in real life.

But, as a slight counterpoint, it's interesting to note that one of the biggest backlashes Anita received after that video was from sex workers themselves who branded her ignorant, misinformed and "whorephobic", mostly on Twitter and Tumblr. The general gist was that for the vast majority of women sex work is something they do voluntarily, so it's disempowering and sexist to suggest that every woman who strips or prostitutes is a victim, and trying to erase depictions of sex workers is a form of "erasure" akin to airbrushing other minorities out of fiction. (To go off on a tangent, there's a short level in the game where 47 visits a tailor to get a new suit made. I could use Sarkeesian-logic to demand that scene be cut, as it "glorifies" an industry that in reality uses child labour and sweat-shops).

 

[WhiteNachos]

To you? No, not really. If your wits are so lacking as to not understand how characters who have no other defining characteristic other than be highly sexualized and fetishized punching bags is extremely sexist, I truly have better ways to spend my time than schooling you. I don't look the part of Henry Higgins, sadly for you.

Did you really just pull the "if you don't agree with me you must be stupid" bit? How old are you?

That's the oldest cop out there is, that and the "I don't have time to educate you but I do have time to keep arguing this with other people" line of nonsense. Just admit you don't have any points. Or if not go ahead and "consubstantiate" them (whatever that means).

 

[WhiteNachos]

Anita should have used footage from the previous Hitman game, Blood Money, instead.
That game is rife with examples of the sort of thing she's talking about.

Scantily-clad women standing around, who serve no other purpose than for fully-clothed male NPCs to ogle at them. Objectified and sexualized women who are the very definition of "background decoration".
One of them even serves as your target.

And you can't even argue that they're "strippers" in a "strip club", so you would "expect" them to be there, ... because they're not strippers, and it's not a strip club.
So, why are they dressed like that?


There's also that other mission, that takes place at a 'porn mansion' in the freezing cold Rocky Mountains, which also has scantily-clad women standing around, with fully-clothed men ogling at them.
Though, in that particular case, it being a 'porn mansion', maybe you could argue that they're "part of the background decoration"... But whatever.

Have you never heard of Hugh Heffner? That mission was clearly a take on him and his mansion.

 

[Knight Templar]

I have played Absolution, there are many times when the game offers me a solution to my problem and even encourages me to use it, when that option makes my score go down. There is for many events in that game nothing but practical upsides, where the score may go down, but the action is implicitly encouraged.

One of the more set up kills involves a rifle, but that also lowers my score, it would be absurd to suggest that the gun placed where I don't need to move in order to get a kill isn't being offered to me as a way to solve my problems.

You shouldn't go "look at the score go down you dumb broad", that is the most irrelevant and ineffective way of guiding the player in the entire game.

 

[Tohuvabohu]

Anita should have used footage from the previous Hitman game, Blood Money, instead.
That game is rife with examples of the sort of thing she's talking about.
Scantily-clad women standing around, who serve no other purpose than for fully-clothed male NPCs to ogle at them. Objectified and sexualized women who are the very definition of "background decoration".
One of them even serves as your target.

And you can't even argue that they're "strippers" in a "strip club", so you would "expect" them to be there, ... because they're not strippers, and it's not a strip club.
So, why are they dressed like that?

There's also that other mission, that takes place at a 'porn mansion' in the freezing cold Rocky Mountains, which also has scantily-clad women standing around, with fully-clothed men ogling at them.
Though, in that particular case, it being a 'porn mansion', maybe you could argue that they're "part of the background decoration"... But whatever.

I think by now, we should be taking in the Hitman series as a whole. When I really think about it, Hitman is quite an oddball when it comes to it's missions, tone, and themes. The games don't remain 'normal' for very long. Often going in surreal directions from one mission to the other and several times in each game, the game takes you to places of sheer depravity. And in my eyes, it becomes hard to apply general rules of depictions when shit in each Hitman game gets seriously weird.

Hitman Contracts is probably the strongest example of this. The very first Hit in the game involves assassinating a morbidly obese semi-nude man, hosting a drug-fueled party in a Meat Factory, where every single patron is dressed in leather gimp suits and there's blood everywhere.

Spoiler

[img src='http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100123024017/hitman/images/2/2a/Meatking.jpg'][/spoiler]

At this point, trying to argue which sex is more clothed than the other is pretty silly. The shit you see in this level is [i]seriously[/i] fucked up. But, that's kindof the point here.

In the level you mentioned in Blood Money, again follows my view of the game going in surreal and depraved directions. It may not be a strip club. But the depravity behind the mission is obvious.
It may not be a strip club, but it's a masquerade party held an illegal arms dealer. Which makes arguing how clothed one sex is more than other pretty silly to me.

Picking and choosing these kinds of levels in Hitman games is easy. The series makes no qualm about delving into depraved settings, and sick situations. But, that's not entirely what every game is about. In every game, you visit a myriad of locations from the exotic, to the mundane, to the weird.

Personally, I'm not sure how much of this is problematic. Surely you can't say that a game is not allowed to depict these kinds of situations. And I think in most cases, Hitman manages to depict these situations to great effect.

 

[Batou667]

Killing people brutally is a-ok! It's only when they are wearing skimpy clothing when it gets creepy...

The mental gymnastics people go through to be offended

Sex and Violence are different things. Mixing them together brings on a third thing, sexual violence, which has creepy and unpleasant undertones.

Barely any gymnastics there, just simple logic. Do you struggle with simple logic?

For the sake of even-handedness - I agree that there's plenty thematically "iffy" with Absolution. There's plenty of stuff you could make valid criticisms of - including some of the depictions of women - which makes it all the more bewildering why Sarkeesian chooses to focus her criticism on grassroots stuff like the very inclusion of strippers, or the fact that they're not immortal and can thus be killed like every other character in the game.

I think the creators of Hitman Absolution tried very hard to channel an almost Tarantino-esque vibe in the game, in that the aesthetic is kind of a love-letter to classic Americana while simultaneously showcasing the utterly fucked-up Americans who are ruling the roost. Think of the kind of stylised badassery present in Kill Bill, or the dark and corrupt depiction of the US seen in Pulp Fiction, and so on. In trying to achieve this I think IO Interactive played it a bit fast and loose and, with only the cut-scenes to really deliver exposition and character-building, ended up providing caricatures rather than characters.

For example, The Saints could have been handled a bit more subtly - it is possible to depict femme fatales in ways that don't seem forced or ridiculous even though they're heavily stylised - think Daryl Hannah in an eye patch and nurse's uniform in Kill Bill 1. Instead, they're presented to the player as little more than "Look, nuns with guns, sexy, eh? Now kill them". It's not misogynist per se but it's done clumsily enough for it to undoubtedly turn some people off.

Elsewhere it seems like decisions in the game were made in a sort of hand-wavey, shoulder-shruggy way that IO hoped would all fall into place and nobody would question them - many of the female characters for example. To give an example, the opening cinematic where 47 dutifully shoots the woman in the shower, a shower curtain conveniently appears and drapes itself over her so we can see neither her tits nor the exit wounds, and there's just enough time for her to make a brief soliloquy before bloodlessly expiring - it's completely gratuitous. Completely bloody gratuitous and rather silly and hackneyed to boot. The scene could have hypothetically worked if the minor, piffling details of context had been set up properly - motivation, character relations, and so on - but instead it's just presented as something that we should either view as a neutral act or else give it the benefit of being edgy and cool in a tryhard kind of way.

Additionally, the few female assassination targets (non-nuns) seem to be included in a sort of carelessly perfunctory kind of way. Most of the male targets are given a fair bit of in-game characterisation: they're either bullies, or sexual perverts, or psychopaths. The female targets seem to have no flaws apart from being associated with the male characters and need to be taken out as they "know too much".

In summary: Hitman Absolution tried to provide an edgy and stylised experience, but cut too many corners to do it really convincingly - and unfortunately a lot of these cut corners coincided with the female characters. I don't believe IO Interactive set out to make a sexist game, but the finished product is sadly very easy to pick apart viewed through a feminist kind of lens. A bit more effort next time would go a long way.

 

[Batou667]

Don't get me wrong, I realize that everything put into the game serve as 'decoration' and helps establish the mood of the game. But why are we so intent on having sexualized female bodies as a standard decoration? What would we lose if we changed them out for something that doesn't have close ties to archaic gender stereotypes?

What part of it is an archaic gender stereotype?

Also, why include a strip club just to include a strip club? Why is it a location that's preferable to a location that doesn't reinforce gender stereotypes of women as passive objects to be ogled by men? Just saying that it should be in there "for the sake of it" isn't a convincing argument for perpetuating shitty gender stereotypes, just like throwing in some casual blackface into a game or movie would be deeply offensive even if "it is just some humor".

Its inclusion in the game is probably partly due to IO Interactive wishing to provide an "edgy" aesthetic including locations that the majority of players will find simultaneously interesting and gritty. It's unfortunate that you have a moral objection to strip clubs in general (just out of interest, what's your stance on male strippers and strip clubs/events?) but surely you acknowledge you're in a minority here. Other locations in the game include a munitions factory (including an area where they test landmines on live pigs) and a prison - both institutions that plenty of people would find controversial, but few people would say that their inclusion in the game is making a positive statement about the arms industry or the prison system. I'd personally say that the strip club section is portrayed just as negatively as any of the other locations in the game.

Didn't say that. I am merely pointing out that the whole "the game punishes it!"-argument rings very hollow. Punishment in-game would be forced game overs, less assets on later missions (like Blood Money, for example) or other things that impeded player progress.

Killing civilians lowers your score, makes achieving the Silent Assassin rating impossible, and generally blows your cover and causes all armed NPCs in the area to turn hostile, requiring you to either fight back in a one-sided and possibly suicidal firefight, or else hide for a lengthy period of time. How can you say that doesn't constitute a punishment?

 

[IceForce]

One of the more set up kills involves a rifle, but that also lowers my score, it would be absurd to suggest that the gun placed where I don't need to move in order to get a kill isn't being offered to me as a way to solve my problems.

Personally, I don't consider those two things to be equivalent.

If a gun is presented as a way to kill a target, that's a means to complete your objective.
But the strippers are not means to complete your objective. By interfering with them in any way, you're making it HARDER to complete your objective. It's easier and more logical to leave them alone and sneak past them.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

Many are actually obstacles, and can be witnesses to crimes. For example, on the strip club mission, there's one particular signature kill where you kill the target during or after getting a private dance. There's a room with a one-way mirror that the player can hide in while the dance happens, and the player can essentially do one of two things.

1. Use a silenced pistol found elsewhere in the strip club to shoot target during or after the dance. If done during the dance, the stripper needs to be killed, or else you'll incur a major score penalty. Edit: I should add here that if you shoot him, it will make a pool of blood appear, which the stripper will then see and investigate, most likely alerting a nearby guard.

2. Sneak around behind him after the dance is done, once the stripper leaves the booth, and garrote the target. This one is more difficult, because the stripper has a good chance of spotting you while killing the guy.

Now either way, if you get spotted by the stripper tresspassing, your score will tank, so really the safest way to get this kill is to kill both the target and the stripper. There's even a container that you can dump both of the bodies into in the room that lets you peer into the booth.

This really just makes it like any other scenario in the game. And, really, any other game with some sort of moral bent. Easier routes are usually skewed toward the dicks, while harder routes are generally "better" or "good." The only difference seems to be that one of the people involved is a stripper...

So, were the genders of the two NPCs involved reversed, and this were taking place at a Chip n' Dales or something, would you consider it to be sexist?

And, frankly, every enemy NPC is an obstacle to your forward progress, not just in this one scenario, but I do get where you're coming from.

Personally, I'd go with route 2. What can I say? I'm a nice guy.

 

[Erttheking]

So, were the genders of the two NPCs involved reversed, and this were taking place at a Chip n' Dales or something, would you consider it to be sexist?

Probably. Also, that isn't a very good counter argument. It's trying to turn things into the oppression Olympics.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

So, were the genders of the two NPCs involved reversed, and this were taking place at a Chip n' Dales or something, would you consider it to be sexist?

Probably. Also, that isn't a very good counter argument. It's trying to turn things into the oppression Olympics.

Not really my intention for it to be an argument in and of itself. Just curious. As long as you view both situations as similarly displeasing on those grounds, then I can at least rule out hypocrisy and value the argument as a difference in consistent opinion/worldview, rather than fault ya for just being biased.

Good though, glad ya probably would see it that way.

 

[Erttheking]

So, were the genders of the two NPCs involved reversed, and this were taking place at a Chip n' Dales or something, would you consider it to be sexist?

Probably. Also, that isn't a very good counter argument. It's trying to turn things into the oppression Olympics.

Not really my intention for it to be an argument in and of itself. Just curious. As long as you view both situations as similarly displeasing on those grounds, then I can at least rule out hypocrisy and value the argument as a difference in consistent opinion/worldview, rather than fault ya for just being biased.

Good though, glad ya probably would see it that way.

Fair enough. And yeah, things just get really fucking creepy whenever sex and violence get mixed. It's one of the few things that can consistently make me feel like I'm going to be sick.

 

[Asita]

I have played Absolution, there are many times when the game offers me a solution to my problem and even encourages me to use it, when that option makes my score go down. There is for many events in that game nothing but practical upsides, where the score may go down, but the action is implicitly encouraged.

One of the more set up kills involves a rifle, but that also lowers my score, it would be absurd to suggest that the gun placed where I don't need to move in order to get a kill isn't being offered to me as a way to solve my problems.

You shouldn't go "look at the score go down you dumb broad", that is the most irrelevant and ineffective way of guiding the player in the entire game.

So...is it also your view that Bioshock advocates child killing because there are more immediate rewards for harvesting the Little Sisters than saving them, Dishonored is anarchistic because it's easier (and honestly more fun, seeing how you get to use your toys to far greater effect) to go around murdering people and getting a high chaos score than it is skulking about and avoiding everyone, and the Knights of the Old Republic franchise is a love letter to the Dark Side because it's usually more lucrative than the Light? Let me be blunt here, when a competent writer wants to portray morality in their work (either implicitly or explicitly), more often than not the good choice will seem less immediately desirable. That's what makes evil so seductive in the first place. It's easy.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

Fair enough. And yeah, things just get really fucking creepy whenever sex and violence get mixed. It's one of the few things that can consistently make me feel like I'm going to be sick.

Agreed, actually. Though I can pretty easily separate the two concepts once they're introduced (the violence overwhelms any sexual implications completely for me) I can certainly understand what ya mean. Just kind of how we all respond to and internalize media, I suppose...or any experience for that matter.

Yeah, but thats not the point. The point is that I'm responding to somebody who says that these situations don't occur on the strip club mission, which is wrong. In fact, if you go for Death by Discoball, you're liable to kill additional NPCs as well. There are times where you're incentivised to kill the stripper in that level, which was the point. I'm not necessarily that its a significant matter that sexualized violence is present, but it is there.

It sounds like there's only the one instance where it could, I'll admit, reasonably (should you be viewing it from that perspective) be construed that you're being incentivized. And I don't personally view that act as sexualized within the context of the game/narrative. I don't really mind what a person is or isn't wearing, even in this instance, when they're simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, which is what that situation screams at me.

That would sound correct, but Absolution uses a score system. You can kill the stripper for a 3,500 point penalty, or leave her alive and risk 90,000 points. Obvious decision is obvious.

I don't really agree with you on this point. I don't view the risk, in and of itself, to be an incentivization to kill the girl. My response is the polar opposite, simply due to the context I'm presented with...it's evil murdering guy in room with woman who works for him and, in all likelihood, is only doing her "job" at present in an effort to avoid being harmed by said guy.

It isn't my objective to hurt any of the people there aside from immediate armed threats and the target itself.

Is the gaming industry dominated by women, where quite often male character only exist to serve the female gaze and be eye candy, and even if they're actually good character, they still have to meet a standard of being very sexually appealing, no matter how impractical it is for them to be running around in a thong? Is "Male Armor Bingo" a drinking game that people play whenever they get their hands on a new RPG?[footnote]http://ozziescribbler.deviantart.com/art/Female-Armor-BINGO-dowloadable-PDF-437578281[/footnote]

Like I said earlier, this mission only exist because "lol titties amirite guise?!?" But to answer your question, depends. It could be commentary on the part of the developer, criticizing how the industry feels the need to shove female breasts in everybody's face, like they were twelve years old showing all their friends a pornomag they found, and that such experiences have reached a point where they're rather jarringand disconnect the player from the experience. Or it could be because the developer just likes cock bulges, in which case I would say yes.

That is...quite a lot of baggage to throw onto that simple question. I do get that ya feel quite strongly on the subject, and I do think that media in general is oversexualized, but I appreciate the honest, if brusque, response.

 

[WindKnight]

In summary: Hitman Absolution tried to provide an edgy and stylised experience, but cut too many corners to do it really convincingly - and unfortunately a lot of these cut corners coincided with the female characters. I don't believe IO Interactive set out to make a sexist game, but the finished product is sadly very easy to pick apart viewed through a feminist kind of lens. A bit more effort next time would go a long way.

I think this is the big point. A lot of the sexist stuff that happens in games (and in general) is not done because there's mustachio twirling sexists trying to keep women down. A lot of sexism is unconscious and/or unintentional, and happens through not putting enough thought and effort into what your putting out is going to mean (this is precisely Sarkeesians message, though a lot of people like to overlook that when they just want to bash her). It doesn't really make it any less problematic, unpleasant, damaging or excusable, but shows the way forward the companies need to take.

 

[Lightknight]

People kill characters all the time in games (especially in games with names like Hitman). Hell, the trailer is of him shooting an unarmed woman in a shower. Not sure why it becomes a feminist issue when it can happen to women. There are also far more male civilians in the game and you get penalized just as much for killing them too. There's also non-civilian females who are every bit as capable of killing you as their male counterparts if not even better armed.

Is the goal to have equality or is it to have things both ways?

Have we considered that these games were not made for feminists? That the studios are not morally obligated to cater to feminists? If the issue is due to there being a strip club in the game then sure, feminists aren't generally going to like strip clubs. Doesn't mean they get to have a say in whether or not they exist physically or digitally in our world. If the issue is just the ability for the player to penalize their score by causing violence to female civilians then they're going to have to explain why this is any different than the violence incurred on male civilians in the game. Seems to me like we've got clearly sexist reasons for arguments against sexism. Isn't doing the opposite of what you set out to do a form of irony? Being sexist in the name of gender equality is hilarious droll.