FrankatronX said:
I know that the image of glamorously ill dressed women jiggling about is not the P.C. ideal but the entire thing is so over the top it's hard to take it in any way as a serious attack on the female image. It's more of an homage to the art and might be cleverer than you may have been led to believe.
Of course the artwork of Dragon's Crown has several layers of depth that most people gloss over in their rush to criticize the artwork, but that depth is precisely what makes this so frustrating for me. Yet I don't expect those who criticize the art of Dragon's Crown on the grounds of sexual objectification to critically analyze the details of the work. I expect it no more than I would expect atheists who criticize the existence of god on empirical grounds to critically analyze Deuteronomy.
It is true that the Dragon's Crown art has depth, the Witch is a play on both the classic depictions of fertility goddesses and the lordly, masculine nature of the common fantasy necromancer. She can be seen in one picture [http://fastcache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/9/2011/06/xlarge_sor.jpg] cradling a "birthing" skeleton to her breast the way a mother would a newborn. I've seen some people equate that to a sexual act, ala motorboating, and a I think Freud would have a field day with that but I find it's a crass, immature analysis of what we're seeing.
All of that depth and all of that uniqueness is ruined once you notice that the Witch is slowly working her staff up her own ass. There is justification for a busty, wide-hipped giver of life to the dead given typical depictions of ancient fertility goddesses [https://www.google.com/search?q=Dragon's+Crown+witch&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.50165853,d.b2I,pv.xjs.s.en_US.seW1cfrvSKg.O&biw=1280&bih=899&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=6uf7Ub7mJoua9QS2pYGIBQ#um=1&hl=en&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=Fertility+Goddess&oq=Fertility+Goddess&gs_l=img.3..0l10.335581.338162.0.338444.17.11.0.6.6.0.125.908.9j2.11.0....0...1c.1.23.img..1.16.843.jvVFoHRM8J4&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.50165853%2Cd.eWU%2Cpv.xjs.s.en_US.seW1cfrvSKg.O&fp=2b1f47b0f34fb2b4&biw=1280&bih=899], but that doesn't justify the impossibly low-cut top [http://i.imgur.com/AzLODdy.jpg], the lack of bra [http://gelbooru.com/index.php?page=post&s=view&id=1187826], the ridiculous [http://i.imgur.com/9PZBhkR.gif] jiggle physics [http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18ltqc64nulhkgif/original.gif], or the staff perfectly splaying her buttcheeks apart. What you're asking is a basic fallacy of composition, demanding we scrutinize the details and ignore the whole.
The details do not exonerate George Kamitani, the whole of the work and it's effect on observers must be taken into consideration. The depiction of the Witch and the Amazon is misogynistic, that is not to say that I think George Kamitani is a bad guy or that he's "immature" as the twat from Kotaku implied. What it means is that he's unfortunately wrapped-up in a culture where the objectification of women is so normal that no one bothers to consider how people might view his depiction of the same. The demand that critics focus on the details and influence of his work is nothing more than a red herring to silence subaltern discourse.
FrankatronX said:
What do all mermaids do? They lure sailors to their deaths on the rocks.
Someone should inform Hans Christian Anderson of this, he might want to know that he should rewrite The Little Mermaid. The Sirens are simply
one aspect of the mermaid folklore, it is not the only tradition and certainly not the first. This ignores other mermaid traditions like the European Melsuine, the Slavic Rusalkas, the African Mami Wata or the Hindi Suvannamaccha.
FrankatronX said:
Mermaids are supposed to be titillating, they just don't work if they are not overly sensual. It's the entire point of mermaids. They are fem fatale's and as such cunning and dangerous. Not to be trifled with in the least but also compassionate and friendly to the pure of heart. Though naked it does make sense to portray a mermaid without clothing since they live in the sea where clothing would be a burden. On the point of her famous butt then I can only assume the pose is deliberate to be alluring to whomever the mermaid is currently attempting to seduce.
They're also supposed to be violent and petty. I'm guessing that Dragon's Crown didn't go with that part, but I haven't played the game yet so I can't fully comment. Still, I can give you the "folklore appreciation" angle, but not if you're just cutting out the heart of what makes the siren a compelling antagonist for the sake of fan service. There is a gulf between what I can see as the difference between the use of nudity in, say, The Void and the use of nudity in Dragon's Crown. In The Void [http://caspiancomic.com/gametheory/?p=49], you peer into the camera obscura of the Sisters served to enlighten you vis-a-vis the nature of the individual Sisters and their nudity could be interpreted as either the freedom of the Sisters as you sever their chains or the Sisters baring themselves to you, showing more and more of who they are as you feed them color. Contrast with Dragon's Crown, whose use of nudity is decidedly pure fan service; Kamitani appears to be appropriating the folklore and traditions of foreign cultures without understanding their significance.
BlindTom said:
To claim that there is something inherently wrong with depicting parts of the female body in any context, especially one that is clearly conveying some sort of depth and artistic vision, is extremely demeaning to women.
I've always found it interesting that males are the ones most willing to tell women what they should find demeaning. I don't agree that it's "demeaning" per se, as it's not a matter of dignity, but holding that depicting a nude woman is always bad is certainly bad for women. Fortunately, this is an idea that exists purely within your mind. I'm criticizing a few of the artistic depictions of women in Dragon's Crown, but this does not mean the issue for me is that there are nude women. The issue is that Vanillaware portrayed these women purely with the male gaze in mind, they exist as hyper-sexualized, overly-exaggerated caricatures of women. It's fine to depict women with large breasts and posteriors, it's even fine to have them naked. You start straining credulity when one of your characters is giving herself a colonoscopy with her own weapon.
BlindTom said:
It seems that a lot of people are not giving artists credit here and just looking for excuses to be pissed off in a way that is puritanical and oppresive to the people they're protecting. I'm reminded of when everybody looked at Mass Effect, saw some side boob, and concluded that it was a "rape simulator."
Let's compare
The Sleeping Venus [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Giorgione_-_Sleeping_Venus_-_Google_Art_Project_2.jpg]
The High-Fantasy Stripper [http://fastcache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/9/2011/06/xlarge_sor.jpg]
Let me preface this by stating that Giorgione's work is certainly erotic. The placement of Venus' hand on her sex, the reclined position, the ruffled silver linen; it conveys Venus after the act of love-making, and I do think love-making is a more appropriate descriptor here. More than that, Venus has her body turned towards us, she's displaying herself to us as we observe her. This is male gaze, it's a symptom of an unequal power structure in media and art. Male gaze is bad, because unequal power structures between men and women in society are bad. This is a rather simplistic explanation of male gaze, but for our purposes it will do.
Now let's follow-up, just because I consider Sleeping Venus an example of male gaze does not mean I hate this painting, I
love this painting. I also love Goya's La maja desnuda [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Goya_Maja_naga2.jpg], even though it's male gaze to the max! Sexism and misogyny doesn't make a work bad, that would be a fallacy of composition as I pointed out above. It only makes it bad if that part infects the whole, and thus far I think Dragon's Crown has an unfortunate few parts that need criticizing but is otherwise a really good game. Hell, it's on my list of things to buy after I get myself a Vita and a PS4.
Something that people refuse to understand is that you can criticize something and still like it, that's why I've been shaming feminists on tumblr for trying to organize a vote-bomb on the Dragon's Crown metacritic page. Nothing thus far has given me any indication that Dragon's Crown is a bad game, and if it's a good one we should hoist it up as an example to be followed...minus those few points we should be criticizing. This is neither puritanical or oppressive; I don't want to hang Kamitani for a woman-hater or destroy his games anymore than I want to burn Sleeping Venus or La maja desnuda.
By the way, focusing on the jiggly bits isn't male gaze by necessity. Male gaze only occurs when you assume a gender-neutral POV/narrative but the work still focuses on the jiggly bits. I love pointing out to anti-sex feminists that technically male-PoV pornography doesn't suffer from male gaze because the PoV/narrative is explicitly male.
JazzJack2 said:
lacktheknack said:
I said that the initial impression is "OMG BEWBS" (because it is), and if they truly cared about how their art came across, they'd stop the painfully obvious pandering. Again, that poor woman's spine is utterly destroyed in the marketing, because no realistic characters can physically stand like that. It's there entirely for sex appeal.
But who cares about initial impressions anyway? if someone believes their initial impression has any relevance at all and they fail to actual critically analyze something then how is it the artists fault? The fact people see the sorceress and see "OMG BEWBS" or "Misogynistic pandering" is irrelevant really because they have failed to acknowledge the real intent of the artist and have instead to decided to purport the idea that their initial impressions are of any value to other people (which they aren't) and even worse that their initial impressions override the artists intentions(which they don't)
You're 45 years too late to this discussion; postmodernist interpretations of literature won the debate in the 60's [http://www.tbook.constantvzw.org/wp-content/death_authorbarthes.pdf] and literary critics generally agree with the "death of the author [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeathOfTheAuthor]" approach to interpreting literature. It makes some sense that way, x is true because y says so" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority] is a fallacy, why did it take literature so long to catch up with what philosophy understood for so long?