The Big Picture: Tropes vs. MovieBob

[Blunderman]

Quite, but I'd say it's a good thing that there is some recognition of which creative expressions are sexist. Big-boobed catsuit nymphomaniacs are not normal.

Which is not to say you can't pull all kinds of ridiculous crap if you feel like doing so. Saints Row 3, for example, was pretty damn hilarious - mostly because it took everything ridiculous it could lay its hands on, and took it up to 11.

The problem lies more with people thoughtlessly accepting or incorporating said catsuit nympho's because of no other reason than that they're used to it.

There certainly is a tendency for developers to incorporate these stereotypes in video games, even though I seriously doubt that any of them have sexist attitudes towards women. It's just market pressure. You want men to play your games, a cheap shot is to include idealised females. The same is true of any other visual media.

It has gone so far that I have on more than one occasion found myself doing a fist pump in favour of Shepard from Mass Effect's appropriately sized chest, but I can't say that I find it to be anything other than sloppy or tacky design, like what we've had to endure from Hollywood for the last decades or so.

It's dangerous to look at a video game character and declare that "that's sexism." Accepting this invites the type of over-sensitivity that is such a problem everywhere; people taking offence to everything left, right and centre. The woman that more or less started all this is partly guilty of such, as she is drawing attention to something that is neither new nor surprising and acting as though it is a serious problem that needs to be addressed and dealt with, making trivial issues seem more important and drawing attention away from where it ought to be.

 

[sonofliber]

i dont get what she wants to change (never saw her videos, please feel extremely free to fill me in on this), but if i have to drawn a conclusion from tv and movies, is that instead of both party looking extremely outrageous, she wants only men to look like that

 

[Guffe]

So, were you just attempting to foreshadow the fact that you might do DBZ next week? Because that would be awesome.

Indeed it would. That would give me a chance to maybe learn something new about the show.
Haven't watched, read or played any DB in several years but just like pokemon my knowledge about the series won't vanish from my head how much I try -.-

Great episode again. I enjoy these thinkers that TBP gives me tuesday nights.

 

[Stripes]

Bob, there were ways of not sounding immensely smug and pandering but you ignored them. You could also take the vocal, petulant youtube crowd with a pinch of salt when looking for opposition. Could you have a look at what this woman has to say in these videos and actually point out the flaws? No one seems to argue against bad feminism, though feminism is an outdated term for what is really a search for societal equality (I cant think of any outstanding laws which are prejudice against women, I cant think that one is unreasonably in favour of women but thats a separate issue and means a lot personally to me, plus its one law and doesnt stand to redeem any of the other inequalities nor marginalise them). Bad feminism is, in my opinion, where some women try to speak on all women's behalf as a means of importing artificial authority over others opinions (I know no one can speak literally on all womens behalf but for every non formal group some try to claim to have mandate for the voice of the entire group to support their personal views and agenda). It is also where women use feminism to impose some sort of strict idea of a 'good' female representation, or are confrontational of men for not being assholes, a good example of this would be the confrontational language in the $50 donation prize thing that this very woman was running.

 

[WindKnight]

could it be the fact that some women really don't help that problem at all by simply, oh i dunno
PRESENTING THEMSELVES AS IF THAT IS ALL THEY HAVE TO OFFER

I've lost the link, but a woman in her 40's/50's was elected to a very high role in the american judicary on the merit of her abiliteis and knowledge.

An article on their being elected was awash with comments to he tune of 'what an ugly b****' and 'I ain't taking the opinion of anyone that bad looking seriously.'

 

[verylost]

What I don't understand is the outrage over how much money she received and the amount of people saying that she should give it to charity.
When Extra Credits started a similar campaign, people donated generously and they received more than their target amount. Where was the anger then? Why weren't people telling EC that there were children starving in Africa?

Apples and Oranges. The EC campaign was only similar in that it used a site like kickstarter their campaign was to pay for a surgery for their artist in which if she didn't get it she wouldn't be able to draw (which was their job) so it was pretty vital. While this one is for a series of videos which is about an issue in video games... not as important.

 

[LordFish]

And the truth is, females really rather like playing female characters that are sexy, i know i do, in the same way that males like playing male characters that are buff.

Oh SHI- I'd never actually considered that

although I'm kinda removed from this whole argument because I can't remember the last time I played a game with a sexualised male or female character. lets see currently installed I have Limbo, Bastion, Prototype, Test drive unlimited, Bloodstone, Fez, Amnesia, Portal 2, Red Orchesta, Counter Strike, Half life, Physconaughts, Blur, Minecraft, From Dust... And I think thats it since I last formatted.

 

[Roganzar]

Now I really want to play Big Boob Panty Ninja 12.

Here, her. Can't wait for that release. Someone get Suda 51 on it immediately.

OT: good topic. I would love to see a report that goes, "Funding drive to discuss controversial subject being discussed online civilly and without vitriol."
Which by the way would actually be news.
One day fandom, of any subject, will be handled maturely. I know it has to happen someday. Or so I keep telling myself.

Now to get Suda 51 to start work on Big Boob Panty Ninja 12 .

 

[Blunderboy]

Now I really want to play Big Boob Panty Ninja 12.

As do I my friend. As do I.

OT - Well said Bob.

What bothers me is that I missed Big Boob Panty Ninja 1-11. I could probably wait on 12 if I just had those.

You can skip BBPN 9, it's just a high def remake of BBPN 5.
BBPN 7 is actually an attempt to reboot the series as an in depth trading and acquisitions sim.

 

[TheMadJayWoman]

Once again - well done Bob.

I don't always agree with everything Sarkeesian says, but I value her opinion and I'm grateful that someone is willing to examine pop culture and point out aspects we might to easily overlook. Y'know - just like I don't agree with everything Bob says in all his many article formats, but I applaud his intellectual analysis of geek culture.

I'm having a hard time articulating a point because I'm just so baffled at the vile spewed at Sarkeesian for no reason. Not that I expect trolls to be logical, but their complaints aren't based in reality (take the above "how dare she ask for money to research and produce quality videos - Yahtzee, etc., don't do that, neglecting completely of course that they are paid reviewers). I do have to enjoy the irony - when you balk at anyone pointing out the sexist aspects of pop/geek culture by scrawling poorly thought misogynist comments, you just reinforce that sexist behaviour is present and ought to be discussed.

 

[GamemasterAnthony]

Well spoken, Bob, as usual.

Personally, I think this is the perfect argument that we need more female gamers. Their feedback could help prevent future problems like this. We could also see a rise in more characters with actual...character rather than image appeal.

Come on, ladies! Get into gaming and help class up this act!

 

[spplmj]

The one thing that bugs me about this is not the fact that the woman is doing these videos but the fact that she is ASKING FOR MONEY. If you go back and watch the videos you see that she apparently already has all 3 major consoles, multiple controllers for each, a TV and a camera. Why does she need $6000 to do these videos? Bob has already done 3 videos about feminism and video games and I doubt he got paid massively for those videos alone. With the $115k she got I'm hoping for some super amazing videos.

 

[Eri]

I think the worst part of the whole Tropes thing is the fact she's gotten over 150,000$ and for what? To make what is basically youtube videos? That's absurd.

Take a look at this show, extra credits, yahtzee, etc... They make on average a 5 minute video a week and constantly put them out, she is making what amounts to 3 hours tops of videos and making way more than I'm sure anyone else gets paid, and for much less work too.

"Basically Youtube videos"? You've seen them?

You're assuming that these videos will be the same quality as Big Picture, Extra Credits, etc. If that were so, then $150K would be plenty excessive. But she does have $150K. She's working with a pretty big budget and considerably more time than a week per video(I assume), so why assume that the videos themselves will be the same as shows working with weekly web show budgets?

I think you're missing the point of Kickstarter. She's not being paid all that money. People are giving her that money for the videos. Perhaps she could just use the $6000 she originally asked for and pocket the rest, I dunno, but she's clearly not doing that; when the funding started to way exceed the goal, what was originally would have been a 5-episode series along the same lines as her other FF videos expanded to a 12-episode series with a classroom curriculum and professional production values.

If you read the pitch, it will only amount to about 3 hours of video. And she's already put videos out, these aren't the first.

So, check your rage. You're free to ignore it and move on.

Your own argument applies to my post.

And no, it's not a scam. But I know no one who puts out any of those series I mentioned gets paid 4200$ per week for 36 weeks of work or anywhere close to that amount. And that's if I just round to an even 150k she's getting paid, MORE is coming in so it's an even higher amount than that.

 

[ThrobbingEgo]

Anita's issue isn't only that some games dare to objectify, stereotype, or exclude women. It's that an overwhelming proportion of games do. The Bechdel test, for example, doesn't tell whether an individual movie is bad, so much as it shows that the mere presence of women is severely lacking from Hollywood films.

This isn't an argument against gaming. This is an argument for why we need more ambitious games.

 

[Colour Scientist]

What I don't understand is the outrage over how much money she received and the amount of people saying that she should give it to charity.
When Extra Credits started a similar campaign, people donated generously and they received more than their target amount. Where was the anger then? Why weren't people telling EC that there were children starving in Africa?

Apples and Oranges. The EC campaign was only similar in that it used a site like kickstarter their campaign was to pay for a surgery for their artist in which if she didn't get it she wouldn't be able to draw (which was their job) so it was pretty vital. While this one is for a series of videos which is about an issue in video games... not as important.

Ultimately though it was for a web series that people enjoyed. This project stated very plainly what the money was for and people still VOLUNTARILY gave her more. EC needed money for an operation, they had more than enough to pay for her surgery and they got to keep the excess to use as they pleased and no one batted an eyelid. I'm not saying that they shouldn't have kept it but Kickstarter projects are becoming more and more popular for musicians and for a huge variety of things this the ONLY one I've seen where people are demanding that the excess money goes to starving children in Africa.

Amanda Palmer had a kickstarter for her album, she aimed for 100,000 and received 1,000,000 and no one asked for their money back or demanded it be given to charity.

 

[Falseprophet]

I'm not against women, I am against people like this who just complain about the smaller issues with sexism, when there are still massive issues with sexism to BOTH genders in even countries like the USA.

Pointing out examples of "sexist" characters in media is easy and pointless. Rather than focusing our energy on trying to make our media somehow more fair and honest (which is in and of itself a laugh, just look at films and TV series) we should focus our attention on how women are actually treated, you know, the stuff that actually matters.

Oh yes, the old "Don't you have more important things to worry about?" fallacy [http://www.2012hoax.org/fallacies#toc34]. AKA a cheap way of not responding to the argument present, or more simply, a cop-out.

It's based on the faulty premises [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AppealToWorseProblems]:

1) That it is not possible to care about big and small problems simultaneously.
2) That venting a minor complaint is sufficient proof that the major problem is considered unimportant.
3) That if the person irritated over the minor problem did help solve or even cared about the big problems, he would then not mind at all that his car broke down or whatever the frustration was...or because there are people with worse problems, that person shouldn't complain about a frustration.

In this case, #2 might not even be important since the mass media can shape people's perceptions, and if entertainment continually portrays women in a negative, demeaning or disenfranchising light, it is relevant to larger issues in sexism because it reinforces the mindsets that allow sexism to perpetuate.

But if you guys really believe this, tell me something. Did you tell the Retake Mass Effect crowd to stop whining about a stupid video game and worry about curing cancer or ending homelessness instead? Why are you bitching on a video game site's forums in the first place? Shouldn't you be too busy building houses for Habitat for Humanity or something?

 

[pyro42]

in reality the biggest reason, well two big reasons that there are more ugly guys the ugly girls, it that, in general, men of more visually stimulated then women. the other reason is that most of the art styles that we use today are call backs the the fantastic and syfy styles of the mid 70's early 80's, and it could be older then that, any ways those artiest were largely male, this is why when most people thing sorcerer they think barely any closes, also evil, i guess.

 

[bootz]

If she used the money to fiance a game to show good character according to her views, that would do more then her just making videos bashing other characters.
All she needs is to find an artist and a programmer.

 

[Fusioncode9]

I don't care that she's making these videos, I care that she asked money for them. Plenty of people have done these kind of videos for free, but she needed 6,000$ to do them. And thanks to the internet she now has over150,000$ to put in her pocket. Wonderful job guys, no I'm sure she'll spend every cent of that on the tropes videos.