Portal empowers women?

[Gunslinger Fox]

http://www.gamesradar.com/us/xbox360/game/features/article.jsp?articleId=20071207115329881080&releaseId=2006071916221774024&sectionId=1003&pageId=20071207115724980042

Guns = Penises

Portals = Vaginas

By taking this Freudian approach to game design the makers of Portal have created the ultimate post modern experience in video gaming by subverting our expectations for the FPS genre and have single handedly elevated video games to the place of high art where it shall be placed in museums where it will topple over the phallic pillars that the powerful rich fat male European artists have erected.

 

[mrbunny]

i dont think portal empowers women, i rkn its more gender neutral. even if the main protagonist is a female - you dont see much of the feminity; i only realised half way through the game that i was playing as a girl when i noticed me, through a parralel portal.

its a game about damn portals - there is no interpretation required. love the game for what it is - not what it could be.

 

[Kaisharga]

I hate to derail this, but please allow me just a moment to sate my curiosity. Mrbunny, does the acronym NTID mean anything to you?

 

[Kieran210]

well, it's an original argument, I'll give it that, but it does seem to boil down to a sexist understanding of gender roles - men dominate and are aggressive, women think and are empathic. Not sure I'll agree with the rest of it because this is a flawed based for the argument.

I think Portal's popularity has got more to do with it's stonking ideas and brilliant level design than it's clever subversion of implicit gender politics, however.

 

[Kieran210]

Oh, don't worry, I certainly wasn't trying to argue that men do not gravitate toward aggressive, dominating roles. I was, rather badly, trying to make the point that it was not the inherent roles/attitudes of men and women, but what society ascribes to them, some of which I do not believe it (but only because I have a problem with generalisations)

The patriarchal nature of games is, I don't think, something to argue about, because it is obviously there, especially in action games. I imagine the main reason for this is that male gaming developers make games that they enjoy, and therefore imbue them with classical male criteria for enjoyment. Whether this is intentional or not is an interesting point, because I'm not sure it is, it's just an unintended consquence of the development process. I'm not sure you can could weave it into the patriarchal over-story of society, apart from mentioning it as a side-effect of said story.

The point about the gun, I think needs a little more criticism. I think the only reason it is a 'gun' is because we lack the shortened vocabulary to express it properly. After all, the apeture science localised portal generational device, or whatever it was, really doesn't roll off the tongue as easy. It's only a 'gun' in a nominal way, much like a wrench and a lathe are both 'tools' but so radically different that they should not really be compared.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I'm not sure about the portals as symbolic vagina's either, though. The point made in the article about the creation of a failed mother figure through science, I think is an excellent point, because it isn't a true Oedipal conflict because it is not, in fact, the mother figure. It also find problems if it had been a true mother figure because we've already mentioned that the character in portal should have inherently feminim characteristic, and therefore not be aggressive (?)

I'll gladly argue games as a new art form, especially in their analysis. I hope that as time progresses and games became even more mainstream, we should be able to take apart a game in this manner and it should stand up to analysis, because of the thought that went into it. I want to play BioShock now, because apparently that has deep thought involved.

K

 

[LordLocke]

People tend to look for deeper meaning in what is, on the surface, just something enjoyable. *Insert that cigar quote here*

Portal's one of the most shockingly innovative games to hit the market since the new generation started, but it seems people want to make it even more then what it is. Anyone who's played through the commentary version knows why the companion cube was made- not as some kind of father figure you start attached to then eventually unburden yourself with on your way to womanhood, but as a creative and extremely well-executed method to 'trick' the player to attempt the stage with the cube from the start, since playtesters kept attempting to complete the level while leaving their six-sided puzzle requirement at the start.

It's a fun little conspiracy theory- then again, with enough creative license, I'm sure you could turn Chell's trip into a parallel with the story of Faust. Just because you can force the pieces to add up to the sum you want it to reach means that's what they were intended with.

 

[locworks]

A few points about the article:

1. "The Portal Gun creates connections rather than destroying life."
There are no live enemies, so it can't possibly "destroy life." Given the opportunity (see the Portal Gun hacked in HL2), the portals can be horribly destructive.

2. "subversion of FPS norms"?

If there is no shooting, how can it be an FPS? Portal is a maze game, not an FPS. The author seems to be confused by the fact that the game was made by Valve on the Source engine.

3. The turrets have "boyish voices"?
No, these are female voices.

4. "Another non-traditional character, the Weighted Companion Cube, represents male identity in Portal."

Yes, and all the crates and barrels (metal and plastic) in HL2 are male too? What about the anonymous cubes in Portal? What is their gender?

5. "[...]Chell incinerates the Weighted Companion Cube, symbolizing a mental unburdening from the need for approval from a father figure."

Symbolizing what? As unwarranted points go, this one gets the prize.

----
Kwil in the post above is too kind in writing that "this kind of examination of the game is useful not primarily due to its content." Its content is rubbish, because it tries to apply a confused and simplistic "reading grid" to what is, in the end, a very fun puzzle game.

"Portal is the most subversive game ever"? Hardly. And the "heady intellectual discourse" is indeed heady, but in the sense of "overbearing" and "rash."

 

[soladrin]

well, simply, i'll just say this, i think its to far fetched and they were probably using "something" while they thought this up its a funny way to look at it, but honestly, i cant really take this seriously, because i to think its kind of neutral, actually i think so for most games.

 

[GrowlersAtSea]

As humans, we really do search for symbolism. From the intentional pronounced metaphors of a novel like Moby Dick, to every day when we look up at the passing amorphous clouds in the sky, we see symbols.

So I don't blame the author here for looking for symbols, it's what we do, we have the brains for it, but I think this might be a bit on the far side. Personally, I've never bought much into Freudian-like interpretations of the world, because ultimately regardless of original purpose or utility, people can invent meanings for objects.

Calling the turrets voice "boyish" I also thought was quite odd. If you listen, it's noticeable that the voice of the turrets is also the voice of GlaDOS, an actress named Ellen McLain.

There are lots of other strange interpretations that people have pointed out but how the author has heard the turrets stood out to me because I think it best shows how far the author is reaching to try to find aspects to reinforce their interpretation of the game.

The search for symbolism can be a fun endeavor, but you have realize from the start that you may be searching for something that is only there in your own mind. That does not make it any less real on an intellectual level, because we all take what we want from experiences. But to call a game subversive based on some rather far-reaching interpretations is a bit much.

That's what I think, at least.

 

[Copter400]

I believe games have the potential to create fantastic, breathtaking experiences and really make us look inside ourselves and all the other crap that comes along with art. I think that Portal is an original and imaginative game, the sort of game that leads other games to becoming deeper.

But psychoanalysing a game for Freudian ideals? It's a game. I'm pretty sure Valve wasn't trying to make a game about feminism. They were trying to make a first-person puzzle (it's not a shooter if you don't shoot anything) game. Certainly, they went for new ideas, but all this stuff about metaphors and symbolism must be the result of the author drinking too much peyote.

And GLaDOS does use physical brutality! She tries to bake you in a furnace! The robots are her tools!

 

[stevesan]

So, how long til we get the Vagina Portal mod? Instead of shooting out a particle-lined portal, you shoot out a big (insert favorite vaginal adjectives here) vagina.

 

[AnGeL.SLayer]

all i have to is that when the people from valve sat down and came up with this game there is no way that all that was running through their minds. noooo way. this is one of thouse trying to explain a blank canvas as art to get billions for it. they are just searching.

 

[rhizic]

you know, guns dont equal pee pees all the time you know, i've seen lesbians holding big old GPMGs and i dont think they saw any phallic symbolism. some times a guns just a huge metal death machine sent down by the godsat valve, and thats that.

however i would say that the ataoginist/boss/mistress in portal has a sexy ass voice, and i think the whole fact she's bossing you around puts across the good arugments for those burning bras over at valve.

plus it is a fps, its first person and you shoot. plus its a pazzle game [like almost every other fps game] but yeah i'd go for FPP [first person puzzler] or something.

oh oh oh you think coming outa of the pther side of the portal is a metaphor for birth? becuase you know EVERY LAST THING ON THE PLANET IS SOME DEEP FREUDIAN METAPHOR, becuase some times a cigars a willy, ya know.

 

[stevesan]

Maybe it's time someone actually made a game about being a woman? Like, Sim Woman - experience what it's like to be a woman in modern America! Where you get cramps every month, hit the glass ceiling in your career, and are constantly badgered to lose some weight, girl.

C'mon ladies, step up! Where is VagiShock, Grand Theft Vagina, Vag Effect, Vagina's Creed, Thelma & Louise: Dead Women (hmm that one could be interesting..), and The Pink Box? I'm only half kidding.

 

[Girlysprite]

I don't even link pink hearts on a cube with a father figure. Maybe they should make it a black cube that yelled at me every five minutes that I was grounded?

Most of the article reads things into the game that aren't there, but then again, the game just does have a slightly more female touch, even if it was only for the female robot voice that talks to you in some (fake) motherly way.

 

[wrshamilton]

all i have to is that when the people from valve sat down and came up with this game there is no way that all that was running through their minds. noooo way. this is one of thouse trying to explain a blank canvas as art to get billions for it. they are just searching.

And what's the matter with the search? Why write about games, or any other cultural endeavor for that matter, if you're not allowed to negotiate your own experiences and meanings found within those experiences? If we took the intent of the author/designer/producer of any given work as not only authoritative, but exactly dilineating the scope of things that can be said about a game, there wouldn't really be any purpose to writing about games on any level deeper than a list of technical specifications and cheat codes.

I don't get how anyone could take "searching" or, more commonly, "reaching," to have negative connotations.

 

[Jeroen Stout]

Maybe it's time someone actually made a game about being a woman? Like, Sim Woman - experience what it's like to be a woman in modern America! Where you get cramps every month, hit the glass ceiling in your career, and are constantly badgered to lose some weight, girl.

And women would play this game, why? To see what it's like to be a stereotypical 'maltreated woman'? They'd know - so supposedly this game is for men. Good. Then perhaps, vice versa, there should be a game about being a man, waking up feeling like having sex, going to nightclubs and pinching bottoms, skyrocketing your career once it turns out that not only you but everybody in the office is manly and constantly telling women to lose weight, ho!

Perhaps then we'd understand why men are such happy, merry, worry-less creatures.