Damsel in Distress: Part 2 - Tropes vs Women in Video Games

"Beatrice!!!" Welcome to the second episode in our multi-part series exploring the roles and representation of women in video games. This project examines the tropes, plot devices and patterns most commonly associated with women in gaming from a systemic, big-picture perspective. Over the course of this series, I will be offering critical analysis of many popular games and characters, but please keep in mind that it is both possible and even necessary to simultaneously enjoy a piece of media while also being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects. I just want to caution viewers that, as we delve into more modern games we will be discussing examples that employ some particularly gruesome and graphic depictions of violence against women. I'll do my best to only show what is necessary but this episode does come with a trigger warning. It is also recommended that parents preview the video first, before sharing with younger children. In our previous episode, we explored the history of the Damsel in Distress and how the trope became so pervasive in classic era games from the 80s and early 90s. We also explored some of the core reasons why damsel characters are so problematic as representations of women. So, if you haven't seen it yet, please check that one out before continuing to watch this one. As a trope, the Damsel in Distress is a plot device in which a female character is placed in a perilous situation from which she cannot escape on her own and then must be rescued by a male character, usually providing an incentive or motivation for the protagonist's quest. Now it might be tempting to think that the Damsel in Distress was just a product of its time and now, surely, the trope must be a thing of the past. Well, while we have seen a moderate increase in the number of playable female characters the plot device hasn't gone away. In fact, the damsel in distress has seen a bit of a resurgence in recent years. [Screams] [Screams] “Rygar!” “Silence!” “Nooo! [Muffled screams] [Screams] “You’ve got to get me out of here” [Screams] [Laughter] “Come and get her” “Alex!” [Screams] “He’s…He’s hurting me” [Screams] “Alice?!” “Help, Please!” “Bullet in her head!” “What a dear little bird you are” And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Suffice it to say, the trope is alive and well, even today. “Let her go!” And since the majority of these titles still focus on delivering crude unsophisticated male power fantasies developers are largely unwilling to give up the damsel in distress as an easy, default motivation for their brooding male heroes, or anti-heroes. Remember, that as a trope, the damsel in distress is a plot device used by writers and not necessarily always just a one-dimensional character type entirely defined by victimhood. Now and then, damselled characters may be well written, funny, dynamic or likeable “I’m just trying to set you on fire through this stupid hat!” “What a delightfully mean little brain you have.” However this extra character development, tends to make their eventual disempowerment all the more frustrating. Damsels on the more sassy end of the spectrum, may struggle with their captors, “Get away from me!” or even attempt an escape on their own. But inevitably, their efforts always prove futile. Occasionally they may be allowed to offer the hero a last-minute helping hand or to kick the bad guy while he is down but these moments are largely symbolic and typically only happen after the core adventure is over or the danger has passed. These token gestures of pseudo-empowerment don't really offer any meaningful change to the core of the trope and it feels like developers just throw these moments in at the last minute to try an excuse their continued reliance on the damsel in distress. Periodically, game developers may attempt to build a more fleshed out relationship or emotional bond between the damselled character and the male protagonist. In the most decidedly patronizing examples, depictions of female vunerability are used as an easy way for writers to trigger an emotional reaction in male players. As we discussed in our first episode, when female characters are damselled their ostensible agency is removed and they're reduced to a state of victimhood. So narratives that frame intimacy, love or romance as something that blossoms from, or hinges upon the disempowerment and victimization of women are extremely troubling because they tend to reinforce the widespread, regressive notion that women in vulnerable, passive or subordinate positions are somehow desirable because of their powerlessness. Unfortunately, these types of stories also help to perpetuate the paternalistic belief that power imbalances within romantic relationships are appealing, expected or normal. OK, so we know that the damsel in distress is alive and well in gaming but that's not the full picture. There's an even more insidious side to the story. Over the past decade, game companies have been desperately searching for ways to stand out in a market increasingly over-saturated with very similar products. As a consequence, we've seen a dramatic increase in the number of games attempting to cut through the clutter by being as dark and edgy as possible. So we've seen developers try to 'spice up' the damsel in distress cliche by combining it with other tropes that involved victimized women. I've identified a few of the most common of these trope cocktails which join together multiple regressive, or negative representations of women, including the disposable women, the mercy killing and the woman in the refrigerator. The term 'women in refrigerators' was coined in the late 1990s by the comic book writer Gail Simone, to describe the trend of female comic book characters who are routinely brutalized or killed off as a plot device designed to move the male character's story arc forward. The trope name comes from Green Lantern, Issue No. 54 in which the superhero returns home to find his girlfriend murdered and stuffed inside the refrigerator. This trading of female character's lives for something meant to resemble male character development is, of course, part of a long media tradition but the gruesome death of women for shock value is especially prevalent in modern gaming. The women in refrigerator trope is used as the cornerstone of some of the most famous, contemporary video games. It provides the core motivational hook behind both the Max Payne and the God of War series, for example “My wife…my child…” In each case, the protagonist's wife and daughter are brutally murdered and their deaths are then used by the developers as a pretext for the inevitable bloody revenge quest. It is interesting to note that the reverse scenario, games hinging on a women, vowing revenge for her murdered husband or boyfriend are practically non-existant. The gender role reversal is so unusual that it borders on the absurd. Which is one of the reasons why this scene from Disney's Wreck It Ralph is so humourous. I could do a very long video just exploring this one trope in gaming, but today I want to look at how the women in refrigerator is connected to the damsel in distress and specifically the ways games developers have found to combine these two plot devices. One popular variation is to simply use both tropes in the same plot line so as to have the male protagonist's wife stuff in the fridge, while his daughter is damselled. In Outlaws, your wife is brutally murdered and you then have to rescue your daughter. “Who did this?” “They’ve taken Sarah” In Kane & Lynch, your wife is brutally murdered and then you have to rescue your daughter. “I’ll find them all before they find Jenny” In Prototype 2, your wife is brutally murdered and you then have to rescue your daughter. In Inversion, your wife is brutally murdered and you then have to rescue your daughter. “Leila, where is she?” In Asura's Wrath, your wife is brutally murdered and you then have to rescue your daughter. “Save her.” In Dishonored, the Empress is brutally murdered and then you have to rescue her daughter, 'though it is heavily implied that she is your daughter too. “Find Emily. Protect her!” It is no coincidence that the fridge plot device and the damsel plot device work in much the same way. Both involve female characters who have been reduced to complete states of helplessness by the narrative, one via kidnapping, the other via ***. The two plot devices, used together, then allow developers to exploit both revenge motivation and the good old-fashioned save-the-girl motivation. Believe it or not, there is another, more insidious version of this particular trope hybrid, which I call 'The Damsel in the Refrigerator'. Now, you may be asking yourself, "How can a fridged woman still be in distress?", since, by definition, bring fridged usually sort of requires...being dead. Well here's how it works. The Damsel in the Refrigerator occurs when the hero's sweetheart is brutally murdered and her soul is then trapped or abducted by the villain. This 'Oh so dark and edgy' twist provides players with a double dose of female disempowerment and allows developers to again exploit both the revenge motivation and the saving the damsel motivation. But this time, with the same woman, at the same time. This trope combination can be traced back to old school side scrollers like Splatterhouse 2 and Ghouls and Ghosts but the Damsel in the refrigerator has definitely become a more popular trend in recent years. In Medievil 2, your murdered girlfriend's soul is stolen and you must fight to save her. [Screams] In The Darkness 2, your murdered girlfriend's soul is trapped in hell and you must fight to free her. “Her soul is mine!” In Shadows of the Damned, your murdered girlfriend's soul is trapped in hell and you must fight to free her. “Yes, help her!” [Screams] In Dante's Inferno, your murdered wife's soul is trapped in hell and you must fight to free her. In Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, your wife's soul is trapped on Earth and you must fight to free her. The damsel in the refrigerator is part of a larger trend of throwing women under the bus in increasingly gruesome ways, in an apparent attempt to interject what are loosely referred to as "mature themes". Developers must be hoping that by exploiting sensationalized images of brutalized women it will be enough to fool gamers into thinking their games are becoming more emotionally sophisticated. But the truth is, there is nothing mature about most of these stories and many of them cross the line into blatant misogyny. Since what we are really talking about here are depictions of violence against women it might be useful to quickly define what I mean by that term. When I say "Violence against women," I am primarily referring to images of women being victimized or when violence is linked specifically to a character's gender or sexuality. Female characters who happen to be in violent or combat situations, on relatively equal footing with their opponents, are typically exempt from this category because they are not usually framed as victims as I mentioned in our last video, the Damsel in Distress doesn't always have to be accompanied by an heroic rescue. “Here I was again, with all hell breaking loose around me, standing over another dead girl I had been trying to protect” Sometimes the hero fails to save the woman in question, either because he arrives too late or because, surprise twist, she's been dead the whole time. “Nicole has been dead this whole time” “No! Kaileena!” “All my powers…and I couldn’t do a thing” “Kill me” Or in the case of the 2009 version of Bionic Commando not only has your wife been dead the whole time, but it turns out she's actually a part of your bionic arm. “I never wanted you to be involved in this” “It’s okay, I’ll always be by your side” Yes, you heard that correctly. His wife is his arm. But the most extreme and gruesome variant of this trend is when the developers combine the damsel in distress with the mercy killing. This usually happens when the player character must *** the woman in peril "for her own good". I like to call this happy little gem the "Euthanized Damsel". Typically the damsel has been mutilated or deformed in some way by the villain and the only option left to the hero, is to put her out of her misery himself. We can trace this one back to the original 1980s arcade game Splatterhouse in which your kidnapped girlfriend is possessed and the player is forced to fight and kill her. After saving his bitten beloved in Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, the hero must then kill her to gain the power to defeat the vampire lord. “Thank you Leon" In Breath of Fire 4, Elina has been turned into a hideous monster and then begs you to kill her. In Gears of War 2, Dom is motivated to rescue his captured wife Maria. When he finds her, she has been starved and possibly tortured into a catatonic state and so he shoots her. In Tenchu: Shadow Assasins "Do it. You must" The princess meekly asks the hero to cut her down to get to the villain, which he does. A particularly egregious example can be found in Grand Theft Auto III when after your rescued Maria Latore, it is implied that the protagonist suddenly shoots her because she is talking about stereotypically "girly things". “I broke a nail, and my hair is ruined! Can you believe it? This one cost me $50!” [Gunshot] The writers deliberately wrote her character to annoy the player, so in the end the violence against her becomes the punchline of a cheap misogynist joke. Sometimes these killings happen via cutscene while other games as the player to participate directly by pulling the trigger themselves. In the Castevania: Dracula X Chronicles remake, if you don't rescue Richter Belmont's beloved Annette, she will turn into a vampire, and you'll then have to kill her. “Oh my God, Annette, I’m so sorry I didn’t save you. But you know what I do to vampires. What I have to do.” “No! I’ll make you mine forever!” The captured women in Duke Nukem 3D beg you to kill them throughout the game. This misogynist scene is regurgitated and actually made worse in the 2011 follow up, Duke Nukem Forever, developed by Gearbox. Another popular Gearbox game, Borderlands 2, also uses this plot twist when Angel asks the player to *** her as a way to try and thwart the villain's evil plans. “Destroying the iridium injectors that keep me…alive…will stop the key from charging and it will end a lifetime of servitude” The end of Alone in the Dark gives the player the choice between killing your girlfriend yourself “Chose quickly, carrier. Kill her or let her live. You alone can decide!” or letting Satan kill her by being reborn in her body. The Wii game Pandora's tower includes one ending, in which Elena begs you to kill her before she completes her transformation into a monster. "Please. I beg of you." "Help me" "I'm so afraid" In the 2006 shooter Prey, when the hero finally reaches his abducted girlfriend she's been hideously mutilated and fused with a monster which you must fight while she screams for help, over and over again. “Get away from me, Tommy! She wants me to kill you! I can’t stop it!" [Screams] After being incapacitated, she begs you to kill her. “Please, Tommy, let me go” And the player can't advance in the narrative until you shoot her in the face. These damsel'ed women are written so as to subordinate themselves to men. They submissively accept their grisly fate and will often beg the player to perform violence on them, giving men direct and total control over whether they live or die. Even saying, "Thank you" with their dying breath. In other words these women are 'asking for it', quite literally. The Euthanized Damsel is the darkest and edgiest of these trope hybrids but it is also an extension of a larger pattern in gaming narratives where male protagonists are forced to fight their own loved ones, who have possessed or brain washed by villains. When Kratos finds his mother in the PSP game God of War: Ghosts of Sparta, she morphs into a hideous beast, forcing you to fight and kill her. And afterwards, she thanks you with her dying breath. “Finally, I am free” After your girlfriend is turned into a green ogre in Grabbed by the Ghoulies, she chases you around, trying to get a kiss. Later, you must beat her unconscious, before she can be returned to normal. The final boss in Shadows of the Damned, turns out to be your own girlfriend. “Where is my freedom?!” Who you must shoot down. Similar scenarios are replicated in dozens of other titles as well. “Get that device off her chest!” Although the narratives all differ slightly the core element remains the same. In each case violence is used to bring these women back to their senses. These stories conjure up supernatural situations in which domestic violence perpetrated by men against women who have lost control of themselves, not only appears justified, but is presented as an altruistic act, done for woman's own good. Of course if you look at any of these games in isolation, you'll be able to find incidental narrative circumstances that can be used to explain away the inclusion of violence against women as a plot device. But just because a particular event might make sense within the internal logic of a fictional narrative that doesn't, in and of itself, justify its use. Games don't exist in a vacuum and therefore can't be divorced from the larger cultural context of the real world. It is especially troubling in light of the serious, real life epidemic of violence against women facing the female population on this planet. Every nine seconds a woman is assaulted or beaten in the United States, and on average, more than three women are murdered by their boyfriends, husbands or ex-partners, every single day. Research consistently shows that people of all genders tend to buy into the myth that women are the ones to blame for the violence men perpetrate against them. In the same vein, abusive men consistently state that their female targets deserved it, wanted it or were asking for it. Given the reality of that larger cultural context, it should go without saying that it is dangerously irresponsible to be creating games in which players are encouraged and even required to perform violence against women in order to save them. Even though most of the games that we are taking about don't explicitly condone violence against women nevertheless, they trivialize and exploit female suffering as a way to ratchet up the emotional or *** stakes for the player. Despite these troubling implications, game creators aren't necessarily all sitting around twirling their nefarious looking moustaches while consciously trying to figure out how to best misrepresent women as part of some grand conspiracy. Most probably just haven't given much though to the underlying messages their games are sending and in many cases, developers have backed themselves into a corner with their own game mechanics. When violence is the primary gameplay mechanic, and therefore the primary way that the player engages with the game world it severely limits the options for problem solving. The player is then forced to use violence to deal with almost all situations, because it is the only meaningful mechanic available. Even if that means beating up or killing the women they are meant to love or care about. One of the really insidious things about systemic and institutional sexism, is that most often regressive attitudes and harmful gender stereotypes are maintained and perpetuated unintentionally. Likewise, engaging with these games, is not going to transform players into raging sexists. We typically don't have a 'monkey see, monkey do' direct cause and effect relationship with the media we consume. Cultural influence works in much more subtle and complicated ways. However, media narratives do have a powerful cultivation effect, helping to shape cultural attitudes and opinions. So when developers exploit sensationalized images of brutalized, mutilated and victimized women over and over and over again, it tends to reinforce the dominant gender paradigm, which casts men as aggressive and commanding and frames women as subordinate and dependant. Although these stories use female trauma as the catalyst to set the plot elements in motion these are not stories about women. Nor are they concerned about the struggles of women navigating the mental, emotional and physical ramifications of violence. Instead, these are strictly male-centered stories in which, more often than not, the tragic damsel's are just empty shells whose deaths are depicted as far more meaningful than their lives. Generally they are completely defined by their purity, innocence, kindness, beauty or sensuality. In short, they're just symbols meant to invoke the essence of an artificial feminine ideal. “Help me!” In fact these games usually frame the loss of the woman as something that has been unjustly taken from the male hero. “So now I take from you” “Jackie, this is not your fault” [Gunshot] The implication being, that she belonged to him, that she was his possession. Once wronged the hero must go get his 'possessions' back, or at least exact a heavy price for their loss. On the surface, victimized women are framed as the reason for the hero's torment but if we dig a little deeper into the subtext, I'd argue that the true source of the pain stems from feelings of weakness and/or guilt over his failure to perform his socially proscribed patriarchal duty to protect his women and children. “And I hated myself for allowing this to happen to her, and our little girl” In this way, these failed hero stories are really about the perceived loss of masculinity and then the quest to regain that masculinity, primarily by exerting dominance and control through the performance of violence on others. Consequently, violent revenge based narratives, repeated ad nauseum, can also be harmful to men because they help to further limit the possible responses men are allowed to have when faced with death or tragedy. This is unfortunate because interactive media has the potential to be a brilliant medium for people of all genders to explore difficult or painful subjects. So to be clear here, the problem is not that fact that female characters die or suffer. Death touches all of our lives eventually and, as such, it is often an intergral part of dramatic storytelling. To say that women could never die in stories would be absurd, but it is important to consider the ways that women's deaths are framed and examine how and why they are written. There are some games that try to explore loss, death and grief in more genuine or authentic ways that do not sensationalize or exploit victimized women. Dear Esther, Passage and To The Moon, are a few indie games that investigate these themes in creative, innovative and sometimes beautiful ways. These more contemplative style games are a hopeful sign, but they are still an exception to the rule. A sizeable chunk of the industry is still unfortunately trapped in the established pattern of building game narratives on the backs of brutalized female bodies. Violence against women is a serious, global epidemic, therefore attempts to address the issue in fictional contexts demands a considerable degree of respect, subtlety and nuance. Women shouldn't be mere disposable objects, or symbolic pawns in stories about men and their own struggles with patriarchal expectations and inadequacies. The 'dark and edgy' trope cocktails that we have discussed in this episode are not isolated incidents, or obscure anomalies, instead they represent an ongoing, recurring pattern in modern gaming narratives. In most cases, the Damsel'ed characters have simply gone from being helpless to being dead. Which is obviously not a huge improvement from her perspective. I know this episode has been a little bit grim, but please join me next time for the third and final installment, covering the Damsel in Distress, where we will take a look at some titles that attempt to flip the script on the Damsel and then we'll go on a quest to find examples of the elusive 'Dude in Distress' role reversal.