08-02-2013, 06:31 PM
(08-02-2013, 06:31 AM)BullockDS Wrote: There are legitimate issues with objectification of women in media (including video games), and it'd be hard (probably even asinine) to deny that. However, I think Sarkeesian totally misses those real issues. Instead, she's focusing mainly on appraising these cases at face value (i.e. as tropes) when the devil's in the details; she rejects the positive aspects of characters like Peach and Zelda either by ignoring them or debunking them on arbitrary grounds, and reduces them to the basic "Damsel in Distress" trope instead of what makes them great characters (the vid Koh linked to at the end of his post brilliantly explains this in further detail). Now, this is a bit of a stretch, but doesn't reducing female characters to a soundbite and trying to remove most/all of their positive aspects... sort of objectify these women characters? Seems Anita's doing more harm than good in this regard.
EDIT: when she talks about how Dinosaur Planet/Starfox Adventures was originally going to be Krystal's game, she entirely edits out and ignores any trace of the male protagonist Sabre from DP both in terms of gameplay footage and concept art. Frankly, considering how deliberate the removal of Sabre's presence was, this is something that serves to hurt her credibility in my eyes.
I really think this sort of mindset hinders the equality movement, as Anita tries to keep the aforementioned "damsel" characters in as much of a negative light as possible in lieu of embracing their empowering characteristics, and (at least so far) ignoring many of the "outwardly" empowered characters (e.g. Samus). In fact, I daresay she's achieved more polarity than equality/understanding of issues.
Didn't she make some Bayonetta video
and it was apparent that she didn't research at all?