-
Movement can be a powerful thing.
-
Most of us who play games can appreciate
-
the importance of a well-timed jump in a platformer,
-
or a skillful dodge in a fighting game,
-
but sometimes it’s the seemingly ordinary movements
-
that actually tell us the most about a character.
-
The way they do simple things like walk, or sit down.
-
And like anything else about a character,
-
movement can be used in ways that resist tired gender stereotypes,
-
or in ways that reinforce them.
-
In Bungie’s hugely successful online shooter Destiny,
-
players start by creating their own character,
-
a Guardian who will fight to protect the last remnants of humanity.
-
As with character creation tools in other games,
-
this one lets you choose from different genders and races.
-
In most ways, Destiny treats its playable female characters
-
almost identically to how it treats its male characters;
-
for instance, the armor you acquire
-
when playing as a female character isn’t sexualized,
-
but looks just as practical and stylish
-
as the gear equipped by male characters.
-
However, there is one way in which the male and female characters
-
are differentiated by gender,
-
and it has to do with their movement.
-
Watch how a male guardian sits down,
-
taking a load off after a long, hard day
-
fighting the forces of pure evil.
-
It’s simple. It suggests confidence.
-
When a female character sits down, however,
-
it’s a completely different story.
-
She sits like a delicate flower.
-
This is supposed to be a hardened space warrior
-
and yet she is sitting around like she’s Ariel
-
from The Little Mermaid.
-
A character’s animation and movement is just as much a part
-
of who they are as their appearance and their clothing.
-
And like any other aspect of a character,
-
game designers use movement
-
to communicate information about them to the player.
-
This isn’t inherently a bad thing;
-
expressive character animations are just a way for the game
-
to contribute to our understanding of who a character is
-
and what defines them.
-
How a character walks, jumps,
-
even how they sit down can tell us a lot about them.
-
For instance, Ree-u Hayabusa’s precise and graceful movement
-
conveys that he is a highly trained ninja,
-
while the way Nathan Drake scrambles and fumbles
-
in dangerous situations is meant to suggest
-
that he’s more of a relatable, ordinary guy
-
who just keeps finding himself in extraordinary circumstances.
-
Nathan: "[Laughing] We were almost in that!"
-
By contrast, the way that women move in games
-
isn’t just used to suggest their confidence or their skill
-
or some other facet of their personality.
-
It’s very often used, in conjunction with other aspects of their design,
-
to make them exude sexuality
-
for the entertainment of the presumed straight male player.
-
Catwoman from the Arkham series
-
has a deeply exaggerated hip sway when she walks.
-
In combination with her clothing and the game’s camera angles,
-
all of this is meant to drive
-
the player’s focus to her highly sexualized butt.
-
In Resident Evil: Revelations, Jill Valentine
-
somehow manages to wiggle her whole body while she runs.
-
In Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, Evie Frye is a character
-
who avoids falling into many of the sexualizing traps
-
that some playable female characters do.
-
But she still walks with an exaggerated hip sway.
-
In Saints Row the Third,
-
you can change your character’s gender at any time.
-
If you go to the clinic and swap your gender from male to female,
-
you also come away with a newly sexualized walking animation,
-
even though you’re literally supposed to be the same character.
-
Male heroes are allowed to simply walk like normal human beings,
-
in ways that are “average” or strong or graceful or goofy.
-
Meanwhile, motion-captured animations for female characters
-
often make them look as if they’re walking down a runway
-
at a fashion show in stiletto heels,
-
even when the characters are actually in combat situations.
-
Watching these characters in-game movement animations,
-
you’d think that the director of the motion capture session
-
directed them to walk like a model
-
instead of a hardened warrior or master thief
-
or bioterrorism agent or crime boss or vampire or assassin.
-
Of course, in the real world, people do walk
-
Not Synced
with a sway of the hips when wearing high heels.
-
Not Synced
If we want to get really technical about it,
-
Not Synced
this slight hip sway occurs in order to maintain balance.
-
Not Synced
This in and of itself is not a problem,
-
Not Synced
(other than generally being deeply uncomfortable),
-
Not Synced
but it raises an important question:
-
Not Synced
why are these female characters in combat roles wearing high heels!?
-
Not Synced
With all the fighting, running, and climbing these women have to do,
-
Not Synced
dressing them in heels is clearly a decision
-
Not Synced
rooted in sexualized aesthetic pleasure rather than believability.
-
Not Synced
In fact, animating so many female characters in games
-
Not Synced
to fit into this very gendered, sexualizing walk pattern
-
Not Synced
is an example of one of the ways
-
Not Synced
the male gaze manifests in video games.
-
Not Synced
The term male gaze was coined in 1975
-
Not Synced
by feminist film critic Laura Mulvey
-
Not Synced
and refers to the tendency for the visual arts to assume,
-
Not Synced
and be structured around, a presumed masculine viewer,
-
Not Synced
or in this case, player.
-
Not Synced
The male gaze manifests when the camera
-
Not Synced
takes on the perspective of
-
Not Synced
a stereotypical heterosexual man.
-
Not Synced
An indisputable example of this is when the camera
-
Not Synced
caresses, or pans across a woman’s body--
-
Not Synced
although it’s not always that obvious.
-
Not Synced
In games, it can be as simple as the in-game camera
-
Not Synced
resting so that a character’s butt or breasts or both are centerline,
-
Not Synced
it can be cutscenes that rest on a woman’s butt,
-
Not Synced
it can be clothing that they are wearing or the way they talk,
-
Not Synced
or it can be as basic as the way
-
Not Synced
a female character moves around the game world.
-
Not Synced
The male gaze reinforces the notion that the man looks,
-
Not Synced
and the woman is looked at.
-
Not Synced
Or as art critic John Berger explains
-
Not Synced
in the 1972 book Ways of Seeing,
-
Not Synced
“men act and women appear. Men look at women.
-
Not Synced
Women watch themselves being looked at.
-
Not Synced
This determines not only most relations between men and women
-
Not Synced
but also the relation of women to themselves.”
-
Not Synced
To be clear, the male gaze is not a hard and fast rule;
-
Not Synced
it’s a theoretical concept that is meant
-
Not Synced
to help us understand the sometimes subtle
-
Not Synced
and nuanced ways in which our culture influences media,
-
Not Synced
and the way that media, in turn, can shape and reinforce
-
Not Synced
existing gender dynamics in our culture.
-
Not Synced
The male gaze is also not in any way limited
-
Not Synced
to men or heterosexual people.
-
Not Synced
Almost all of us internalize
-
Not Synced
and sometimes identify with the male gaze to some extent.
-
Not Synced
Eradicating the male gaze is not as simple as
-
Not Synced
introducing an inversed female gaze that sexualizes men, either.
-
Not Synced
Not just because equal opportunity sexual objectification
-
Not Synced
isn't the answer, but also, because it isn’t actually equal.
-
Not Synced
One reinforces preexisting oppressive ideas about women
-
Not Synced
that are real and damaging to women in their everyday lives,
-
Not Synced
the other does not reinforce anything.
-
Not Synced
Nor are the two interchangeable.
-
Not Synced
For example, when the satirical website The Hawkeye Initiative
-
Not Synced
reimagines male characters in sexualized poses
-
Not Synced
that are common for female characters,
-
Not Synced
it isn't using the “female gaze.”
-
Not Synced
This is just the male gaze, applied to men.
-
Not Synced
When male characters are depicted as shirtless or wearing little clothing-
-
Not Synced
like the character sometimes dubbed "Hot Ryu" from Street Fighter V-
-
Not Synced
their lack of clothing demonstrates their power and strength,
-
Not Synced
rather than depicting them as erotic playthings
-
Not Synced
or reducing them to sexualized body parts.
-
Not Synced
The same is true when it comes to movement.
-
Not Synced
Male characters get to move in ways that emphasize
-
Not Synced
all sorts of characteristics and personality traits,
-
Not Synced
but there’s a whole world of untapped potential
-
Not Synced
for representations of female characters
-
Not Synced
who aren’t animated in ways that frame them as sex objects,
-
Not Synced
but who get to just be stealthy or strong,
-
Not Synced
swift or imposing, clumsy or graceful.
-
Not Synced
The way Ellie moves in The Last of Us
-
Not Synced
communicates a sense of tension and danger,
-
Not Synced
demonstrating what it’s like when female characters
-
Not Synced
are animated in ways that emphasize their personality
-
Not Synced
and emotional state rather than serving to sexually objectify them.
-
Not Synced
The path towards equality and liberation
-
Not Synced
does not lie in equally reducing men and women to objectified parts,
-
Not Synced
but in treating people of all genders and with all types of bodies
-
Not Synced
as full and complete human beings.