Why Can’t Lara Croft Wear Capes and Princess Peach Save Herself?
Laura Mulvey, a feminist film critic, coined the term ‘male gaze’ which refers to the act of depicting women from a masculine perspective that reduces women to their bodies and are objectified just for the sake of the male viewer. This term has been seen at play in all kinds of art, from cinema to literature to video games.
Let's talk about Lara Croft, Tomb Raider's protagonist. Lara's body has been carefully developed to be sexually appeal to its targeted players. With voluptuous breasts and an exaggerated hip sway, even a strong and intelligent female character such as her ends up as a sexual object.
What's remarkable is that this depiction is deliberate. Enough consideration has been taken to develop the characters’ appearances on screen. Attempts are made to cover the butts of the male characters by using capes, baggy jeans, etc. while female characters are made to wear clothes that emphasise the very same. Often a move-on-the shoulder angle is employed in order to prevent the players to see below the waistline of the male characters, while female characters' body is entirely visible, which is meant to be sexually appealing.
Apart from being depicted as sexual objects in video games, women are also portrayed as damsels in distress, a classic theme starring female characters in dangerous situations from which they must be rescued by the male characters. This is often the way women are portrayed in video games, as submissive and un-intelligent characters who cannot save themselves.
Through first person shooter games (where players view the game through the eyes of the protagonist), players participate in the objectification of women by direct control over the camera. Designers often make the lead character walk through brothels and women’s dressing rooms. In the Saboteur, for example, the lead male character can only access his home by walking through a women's dressing room. In Assassins Creed, the protagonist requires the courtesans to flirt with the guards in order to let himself slip freely. Through Non-Participating Characters (NPCs), women are often used as decorations, only present in the game to sexually appeal to its players.
By portraying women as sexual objects, players grow unrealistic ideas of the ‘feminine’ body. Male players would have unreal expectations, while female players might develop body image issues while comparing their bodies to the unrealistic ‘ideal’. When women are given passive roles, as sexual objects in video games, it only strengthens traditional gender roles.
If you read this and feel that it’s ‘too feminist’ and that we shouldn’t interrogate everything from a feminist lens, answer us when we ask why women are made to wear heels in combat scenes instead of shoes like their male counterparts. Why did a feminist video game critic received rape and murder threats when she tried to bring out the misogyny in video games?
It is through skewed representation in cinema, art, literature, and even video games that deep seeded misogynistic views and traditional gender roles become hard to break. We need to question why characters are developed the way they are? We need to look around ourselves and see that we are being made to internalise gender stereotypes.
We are not asking to equally sexualise male characters but that women should be better and realistically represented. How outrageous is it to think that Princess Peach saves Mario? Women aren't rewards at the end of the game, but characters that fight their own wars!
To see more on video games and gender representation, check out the YouTube channel FeministFrequency.
