Portal empowers women?

[The Rogue Wolf]

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

...we are? When did I miss this memo?

Anyway. Guns-as-representations-of-the-penis thing aside (and am I ever resisting the urge to quote the movie "Zardoz"), it's rather difficult to say that Portal is a game that empowers women- if for no other reason than, of the two characters the game features, one doesn't utter a single syllable and the other isn't actually a woman, but a psychotic artificial intellgence that just happens to have a woman's voice.

 

[Traiden]

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

I too missed this memo... or is that because I am not much of a man.

As for the topic... I still don't see anything you said being represented here. In my mind I have a very complex 3-D puzzle game with very funny things that can be done. I like sitting around durring the boss fight listening to GlaDOS and the machines. "RAHHAHAHAGGAGASSGAGSAGS ARAGSGASGAGSA HAGAGAGAGAHASGSHSHS" As the red ball would say.

 

[BonsaiK]

Excuse me while I get a bit tangenital:

Here's Dee Snider of Twister Sister being questioned by Al Gore, responding to accusations that his song "Under The Blade" was about "sadomasochism and rape".

--

SENATOR GORE.
You say your song "Under the Blade" is about surgery. Have you ever had surgery with your hands tied and your legs strapped?

MR. SNIDER. The song was written about my guitar player, Eddie Ojeda. He was having polyps removed from his throat and he was very fearful of this operation. And I said: Eddie, while you are in the hospital I am going to write a song for you.
I said it was about the fear of operations. I think people imagine being helpless on a table, the bright light in their face, the blade up, who knows, dead, handicapped. There is a certain fear of hospitals. That is what, in my imagination, what I see the hospitals like.

SENATOR GORE. Is there a reference to the hospital in the song?

MR. SNIDER. No, there is not. But there is not a reference to a woman, sado-masochism, or--well, bondage, yes.

SENATOR GORE. There is a reference to someone whose hands are tied down and whose legs are strapped down, and he is going under the blade to be cut.

MR. SNIDER. Yes, there is.

SENATOR GORE. So it is not really a wild leap of the imagination to jump to the conclusion that the song is about something other than surgery or hospitals, neither of which are mentioned in the song?

MR. SNIDER. No, it is not a wild jump. And I think what I said at one part was that songs allow a person to put their own imagination, experiences, and dreams into the lyrics. People can interpret it in many ways. Ms. Gore was looking for sado-masochism and bondage and she found it. Someone looking for surgical references would have found that as well.

--

And that's why, although clever and articulate, the article about Portal is basically nonsense from start to finish. People interpret things differently, depending on their experience, and naturally some feminists would read into Portal a bunch of gender-issue politics because some of these people are OBSESSED with gender-issue politics and see them EVERYWHERE. But just because I look at a cloud floating in the sky and see a penis or a vagina doesn't mean that the cloud is "subverting" anything.

 

[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.

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.

Ok I'll get a little serious now. The point wouldn't be to have American women play the game. The point is to let others, whether men or just non-American people, get a feel for what it's like to be a woman in modern America. How feasible this is..I have no idea. It seems best fit as some graduate student's thesis. Just a random thought.

I remember a while ago this interactive Flash thing that taught you Japanese business manners. So perhaps games can be used as cultural communication for various cultural groups.

 

[Beeblez]

As someone who has also chosen to waste years of their youth on silly degrees in silly things, I saw this thread and actually felt compelled to register and offer a brief defense of the author, because I thought this thing was dash cunning. Also, thanks to the above posters who mentioned aspects of this before.

"[Warning: The text you are about to read contains heady intellectual discourse and is not recommended for anyone made queasy by the discussion of feminist film theory or psychoanalytical signifiers.]" is also a bit of a hint the whole thing is a joke. Not a "ha ha that's false" joke. But more a little wink and a nod to people who have read about those things and all ready know how ridiculous they are inherently. I don't think the author is seriously suggesting that the feminist revolution is going to happen the day after women start playing portal. Rather, that this sort of academic game that the author is dabbling in--the one of (Lacanian) Psychoanalytical signifiers and feminist implications--absolutely occurs within videogames.

The biggest points I took from that article are these:
1) Games are literature insofar as literature has invaded cultural studies. Any attempt to have any aspect of that first sentence without eating the whole cake is cheating.
2) Most action games are generally pretty masculine in a lot of obvious ways. And portal does reject many of these (ie. it has no conventional enemies).
3) Since Portal does, no two ways about it, a lot of very innovative stuff that isn't common in gaming. If gamers want to be taken seriously, that's exactly what we need to question. What does portal *mean.* We've noted that portal breaks trends and revolutionizes whatever, but what is the significance of the things portal does differently? What is the significance of Portal that makes it this revolution in gaming that people are calling it, and what does this "revolution" reflect from reality

Now number 3 is where most of the issues seem to come up. People who are saying in various ways that it's just a game and you shouldn't think about it so much. Or that because everyone plays games differently what she says is wrong. Or because VALVE didn't make the game with the intent of causing a feminist revolution that the game isn't feminist.

All that stuff is valid, don't get me wrong, but it also doesn't really matter to the articles. I mean those are all critiques you could literally use against Shakespeare--all of them have been, actually. So while you can object to this particular interpretation of portal (and indeed I encourage it! what better way to start thinking about the questions I described in 3?), I think the reading of portal is the hugely important part. And trying to suggest that portal shouldn't be read in terms of "what it means" is basically to say that games aren't part of culture the way that music and art and literature are. And I think that's plum crazy. And I think the articles *does* make a damn fine argument for that.

 

[Beeblez]

Personally, I think calling the oval shape of the portal a vaginal representation is probably reaching a little too far -- sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, after all. Also, it should be pointed out that while Portal may be a subversion of the dominant male ethos in FPS, it is still largely influenced by patriarchal trappings. You still have a "gun", after all, which Narbacular Drop demonstrated was not needed, and the portal generation could have been explained through psychic powers. In fact, this would have been a much more "organic" implementation, thus one more in tune with the typical gender role placed upon the female. In addition, the "portal as vagina substitute" theory poses some difficult metaphoric meanings when one reaches the end of the game and uses the portal to destroy the male-created mother/monster figure that is present in GLaDOS by, literally, burning its balls. (Some might argue that this fits with the Freudian interpretation and the Oedipal complex as a destruction of the mother figure is the ultimate sign of aggression, but this runs into difficulties when we see that the destruction is not of a true mother, but of a male created one, and is done by essentially de-masculinizing it)

This was an excellent post that made me want to comment again.

I also agree with the point about the portals perhaps being a bit too far to press a visual metaphor into serving as an abstract one. Although, with your argument about the aggression towards the mother as Oedipal, I agree but I think it doesn't go quite far enough!

Remember Glados is constructed by men, She's a fake. so perhaps she isn't the mother. Our female protagonist is threatened by this false female voice who constantly tries to confuse her and give her conflicting demands: then we learn it's a false female constructed by men. The tasks which are seemingly so arbitrary are, in fact, arbitrary. It is only when she realizes listening to the voice means her destruction that she escapes the task and begins to subvert the commands. Also, not until then the voice becomes anxious and troubled. Not until then does the voice reveal the power that it "lacks." If she "busts balls" to kill Glados then it's because she is deconstructing patriarchy which enforces a set and fixed (and therefore oppressive and, in an excessively Lacanian sense, phallocentric) narrative. Her mother figure is absent for there is nothing that represents the nurturing and the safety of "lack," Glados, the ultimate figure of patriarchy holds all the power and all the cards as long as she plays by the rules. That is exactly the position of the father against which she strikes. By killing her father she enables and allows the desire for the mother, the desire for lack, which she herself was forced to embody for glados. Is her victory not a death of the father within this Oedipal narrative?

(the above is all in fun! )

 

[Rent]

Pointless thread, its so pointless i regret ever typing this.

 

[Kieran210]

Pointless thread, its so pointless i regret ever typing this.

Then why bother? Just because you don't understand doesn't mean you have to drag us down with you. Go away.

 

[Triggerhappy938]

Hey, baby, how about I stick my Gravity gun in your Aperture Science department Portal Device.

 

[Captain Planet]

Personally everything in Portal comes across as being so robotic to me, I never associated my Companion Cube or even GLaDOS with a gender. It's a robot, with a female voice. And the cube is, well, an object. With hearts on it. Pink hearts. That's masculine. For sure.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

And the cube is, well, an object. With hearts on it. Pink hearts. That's masculine. For sure.

It's a manly shade of pink!

 

[LR]

I didn't think it was mentioned anywhere in here that Valve didn't actually create Portal... it was some college student's project for something and Valve was all 'hey man that's totally cool we want it' and they bought it from him and added their own stuff and finished it. ((The student had been having trouble with the way the portals worked when Valve bought it from him.))

That being said, I am in the firm belief that Portal is not some deep and meaningful feminist-powered game. The fact that this argument was spawned from that belief is indeed brilliant, and does in fact further the statement of video games being art. But in all honesty, it's just a video game. Play it, have fun, put it down and play something else. If we took the time to overanalyze everything they put out in stores, we would never get through any video games.

And I disagree; the turrets are very much enemies. I don't think anything friendly would shoot at you whenever you entered it's line of vision and would try to kill you repeatedly. -- No matter how innocent and apologetic they sound. And the argument of them being 'real' or not... Anything tangible is pretty much considered real.

One more thing: If Valve DID make this game with every intent you guys are saying and every argument you have is true... so what? What is going to be accomplished by you or Valve saying 'yep, you've figured us all out'? You'll get a pat on the back and the satisfaction of proving yourself right on the internet. Oookay, neat. Looking at this from a male perspective I can understand how that'd be 'totally awesome', but in the end all it is is a fascinating concept that you really can't prove or disprove for a game that's just as amazing as the theories people make for it.

That being said, I'm gonna go play some UT. :3

 

[soladrin]

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.

Ok I'll get a little serious now. The point wouldn't be to have American women play the game. The point is to let others, whether men or just non-American people, get a feel for what it's like to be a woman in modern America. How feasible this is..I have no idea. It seems best fit as some graduate student's thesis. Just a random thought.

I remember a while ago this interactive Flash thing that taught you Japanese business manners. So perhaps games can be used as cultural communication for various cultural groups.

i wasn born with a dick to know how women go through life, much less an American women. I wont meet any of those anyway, and i much less care. And who cares about stereotypes in the first place? I wont read books about someone not doing anything special either now would i? i want something unexpected to happen in my games, not some stereotype ***** wich doesnt get what she wants.

 

[innocent42]

I'm not really sure how this Oedipal thing is supposed to work. I mean, is GLaDOS a mother figure? Or maybe a male-constructed fake mother figure? How do we know that it wasn't women that constructed GLaDOS? What about the ball busting thing? Is GLaDOS then supposed to be a father figure? The Oedipus thing is all about sons' relationships to their fathers, not daughters'. As a female protagonist who never speaks, how exactly does Chell represent women in general? I understand that Portal is not as hyper-masculine as, say, Gears of War, but calling it a feminist game seems a bit of a stretch. I don't have a problem with people thinking about and writing about games, in fact I'm all in favor of it, but the author of the piece doesn't have any evidence from the game, only his speculations about what stuff in the game may or may not mean.

Case in point, the Weighted Companion Cube as a symbol of male oppression. It's quite clear that the author started with the idea that male oppression should be represented as a burdensome thing which can then be destroyed, and then looked in the game for something that fit that description. The companion cube fits moderately well, so he used it, while ignoring its utter lack of other masculine characteristics. He kind of did the same thing with the turrets, calling them "boyish" when it is quite clear that they were voiced by a woman (Ellen McClain, who also is the voice of GLaDOS, the announcer from TF2, the Combine Overwatch, and a few other things in various Valve games.) When I see someone modifying or selectively examining the characteristics of the item they are criticizing, I immediately lose some trust in what they are saying.

Edit: I agree with whoever it was who said that Portal is about robots. I feel that many Valve games have a sort of fascination with the difference between humans and machines. GLaDOS at times seems quite human, but is really a machine, while the voiceless Chell and Gordon are presented as humans, but actually behave like machines. The part human, part machine Combine soldiers in the Half-Life series are another example of this, as are the Portal turrets, which speak in strange and disturbing voices, even though GLaDOS states at the beginning of the first turret level that the course is for military androids. The turrets are robots designed for interacting with other robots, yet also interact with Chell in a rather specific way.

 

[Alanicor]

If the portals are symbolic references to vaginas, doesn't Chell's willingness to jump through them make her a lesbian? Perhaps a latent homosexual only able to indulge her subconscious desires by signing up to the aperture experiments?

No sorry thats just rediculous. But so is the linked article reducing a taxing and inventive game such as portal to a mechanism for bringing this whole gun/cock psychobabble to attention amongst gamers again (mostly men). Yes flay us we deserve it!

I'm off to shoot my poor oval armitage shanks with my weapon of enslavement, domination and bladder emptying.

 

[Alanicor]

Yes sorry big man.

I should take note and storyboard my ideas to my friends before posting.

 

[Easykill]

The entire article is flawed. I hope this is a joke and no one actually believes it.