Princesses, Privilege and Power

I've come up with a new theory. 

This is hardly surprising, because I seem to come up with a new theory every week. I spend some time beaming at how brilliant I am, then discover that whatever idea I just had was already tested to death. Sometimes I wonder if I'm a little late to join the social psychologist game.

And, giving credit where it's due, this new theory was largely inspired by Marc Gold's competence-deviance hypothesis. It's a fascinating hypothesis that states, in brief, that the more competent society views you as, the more deviant you society will let you be. And someday I will test the shit out of this hypothesis until it breaks. 

This might seem like a leap, but my shiny new theory basically states: It's not what you have, it's what you don't have.

If you want to ask how that connection was made--don't.

I've noticed this in my own life, growing up. Disney princesses get a whole lotta flack these days, basically for sitting around and waiting for their prince to come. I recently read Cinderalla Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Frontline of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein. Though there are some things you need to take with a grain of salt a wedge of lime, and a shot of tequila, the crux of the book is this: it's become too common for said "girlie-girl culture" to be shoved down the throats of girls. This is why I am no longer permitted to go into the toy section at Target. I am a very angry woman as it is, and when I see anything labeled "Pinkalicious", I feel the need to start hurting things. Then I go look at Nerf guns and feel a little better--again, competence-deviance! 

Fun fact: Roy Disney believed that Disney characters should never enter the same fictional universe as one another. Whenever you see any merchandise with more than one princess on it, they will never be looking each other in the eyes. I bet you've never noticed this before, but now you will, and I'll just tell your right now: it's fucking eerie.

Another thing of note: how often do you see the princesses* like Pocahontas or Mulan on these backpacks, lunchboxes, coloring books, bedspreads, or school supplies? Not very often, if at all. 

Tiana from The Princess and the Frog was a pretty valiant effort to give the princess some backbone, and she did stand on her own pretty well. To be perfectly honest, though, I found her kind of boring. It's the new princesses I love: Rapunzel and Merida. Merida is actually the first female protagonist in any Pixar movie, ever. 

Dear Pixar,

I really enjoyed Brave and loved Merida's character, but WHY THE HELL DID IT TAKE THIS LONG?!

Love,
Kaye

Toy Story came out in 1995. It's about damn time.


I suppose I shouldn't be complaining too much. Growing up, I was right on the cusp of princesses going from useless girls in poofy dresses to girls who actually get out and do shit--like save the guy.

I was raised on a diet of Disney movies, musicals, and books about girls and their horses. This goes right back to my theory, because while I got plenty of this: 

"Wait here for some guy to save me? Screw that,
 I'm going to law school  in August and
 I'm suing my step-mother for slavery and harassment."

I also got plenty of this: 

Fuck you, prescribed gender roles!

I'd also like to take this time to give a shout-out to my mom, who was the one who really got me to notice things like these growing up. Thanks, Mom. Without you, I may not be perusing a doctorate is social psych, or have a place to stay when I'm utterly penniless after paying loans. And another huge shout-out to my wonderful professor (who I've mentioned here once before) for really introducing me to all this stuff. You both have helped me figure out my life in ways that I'll never be able to fully express.

Excuse me, there's something unmanly in my eye. 

Kaye's Train of Thought

But what does this have to do with games? That's why we're here, right? Vid'ja games? There is ample room for Disney Princess complaints in other places. So while my train of thought does meander around quite a bit, I promise you, I do have a point:

It's not what you have, it's what you don't have.

This could apply to pretty much anything--education, role models, radio stations (I used to live where the only stations were country or Jesus, and after awhile I forgot why I hated Taylor Swift. Musical Stockholm Syndrome)--and games.

Awhile ago one of my friends asked me a question: Why do some games allow you to choose your character's gender, but some don't?

My first thought was immediately, "the storyline!" One of my favorite games, Tales of Symphonia, is pretty much all about the story; battles and game mechanics are secondary. In that game, you can't choose the main character's sex, or even change his name. It seems pretty restrictive in that sense. But it's still a damn good game, so don't judge it based on that.

It seemed sort of obvious, but then I remembered some of my favorite games, like Dragon Age. It has a wonderfully strong plotline (if a little generic at times), and you can customize everything about your character--their looks, voice, personality. So it can't be just the storyline. In fact, most of the games I've reviewed in this podcast have next to no storyline, and no customization of characters. I think of Legendary in particular. The main character's identity has so little to do with the rest of the game, does it even matter?

Yay, shameless self-promotion!

I get it--character customization doesn't work for every game. Maybe I've just been spoiled by BioWare. Maybe I should just be grateful for Lara Croft and Samus and be done with it.

If this isn't what epiphanies look like,
then I don't want to be right.

Or maybe I should wonder why we don't have more kick-ass female characters, or why we can't make our own. And then I had an epiphany: 

Kaye: I love my Shepard! She's such a bad ass!

Sam: Don't you mean HE'S such a bad ass?

It all comes down to one thing that has shaped not just the game industry, but pretty much life as we know it. 

Privilege.

I'm sure it's a word that most people are familiar with. "Driving is a privilege, not a right." How many times have you heard that one? Or maybe that's just me. Geez, you kill a van just one time...

The basic definition of privilege is something special that you have but not everyone else does. Going with the above example, I have the privilege of driving: I'm old enough, I have a license, and my sight is good enough that I'm not dangerous to others on the road. Because of these things, I am allowed to drive a car while not everyone else can. 

But if you're looking at privilege from a social perspective, then there are a couple things you need to understand about it. First, privilege is not earned. It is something that you happen to be--some trait about you that you did not choose for yourself and largely have no control over.

It comes in all forms, and often in the shape of the most basic things about you. For example, I have White privilege, cisgender privilege, able-bodied privilege, and heterosexual privilege. I didn't decide one day to be White, or to have my sex match my gender (yes, there is a difference between the two, but that's a post for another day). People of my race are represented in the media I view, I never have to be confused about which restroom to use. I don't have to worry if the restaurant I'm going to has a wheelchair ramp, and no one will ever tell me that I'm going to hell for being with the person I love.

I'm a very lucky girl.

Which brings me to our second point about privilege: You are largely unconscious of your privilege.

Awhile back, one of my friends commented about ethnic diversity in video games. This blog focuses on gender, sure, but it still all falls under the category of social commentary. When I first read this, I was pretty excited, and then I nearly shit a brick. Why hadn't I thought of this? For all I go on about gender equality in games, I'd hardly given a thought to race. It wasn't an issue to me. But it was to Jasmine.

Here's the difference: I am White. Jasmine is not. Even if I don't necessarily like the way that women are portrayed, at least White characters get fair representation throughout, well, pretty much everything in American media, while characters of many other races do not. 

To once again quote David Gaider: 

"You can write it off as 'political correctness' if you wish, but the truth is that privilege always lies with the majority. They're so used to being catered to that they see the lack of the catering as an imbalance."

David Gaider, please write all the games forever. 

There are whole "checklists" of privilege, and I've included them in my sidebar links on the right. Yes, I tend to focus on male privilege, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many small advantages that we all have that we are largely unaware of. You enjoy something that others do not, because of something you did not choose.  (Warning: this list is guaranteed to make you feel horribly guilty, but check out a few anyway. There's a lot you're missing that you don't even know about.)

And I'd like to add one to The Male Privilege Checklist: If I am unable to choose my video game character's sex, it is likely the protagonist will be a male anyway.

Be aware of your own privileges. Be aware of the privileges that others have, or don't have.

And once we understand these things, we can start to change them. 

*For those nit-picky people, I use the word "princess" as a general term for any Disney female lead, even if they're not technically royal.

I think a fun thing to do might be to take a drink every time I use the word "privilege" in this entry, but then you might die, so don't do it after all. 

Throwing science at the walls: Portal 2

Portal 2
Year: 2011
Developer/Publisher: Valve
Systems: PC, Mac, PS3, Xbox 360

I don't think anyone could have predicted Portal's success. It started as just an extra in The Orange Box, but caught on like wildfire, and it's not difficult to see why.  Not only does Portal have some of the most fun, physics-defying puzzles I've ever played, it also features wonderful dark humor and is astoundingly quotable. In fact, the only real complaints I've ever heard about Portal were that it was too short.

Later on, the fans would complain about the other fans, because after after you've heard people shouting "The cake is a lie!" for three days straight, it becomes less funny.

The only logical step for the developers was to pull a Disney and make a second one. Unlike Disney sequels, however, this was actually better than the original. Okay, I'm probably going to get some flack for saying that, but consider this: they took what was good, and improved upon it. There were times when I actually caught myself laughing out loud. The second game haa a more tangible storyline, which only serves to make Aperture Science even creepier than it already is. What I find really interesting is that though there are several more characters in the second game (read: more than two), it still manages to capture Chell's isolation so completely.

Think of the first few minutes of gameplay. You are woken up by an overhead voice, learn some basic controls, and are sent back to sleep. When you next wake up, you are alone, you have no idea how much time has passed, everything in the Enrichment Center seems to be broken or overgrown...and there is not another living soul in sight. Only robots. When you finally do hear another human voice, it's a decades-old recording.

Maybe it's just me, but the more I think about it, the scarier I find it. It doesn't help that Cave Johnson is so out of his mind he puts Tesla to shame as a mad scientist. (I might get shit about that one, too, but Tesla never made a quantum space hole that could be used as a shower curtain.)

"If you're allergic to peanuts, you may want to tell somebody now, because this next test may turn your blood into peanut water for a few minutes. On the bright side, if we can make this happen they're going to have to invent a new kind of Nobel Prize to give us, so hang in there." - Cave Johnson

Aside from the new story, there's a ton of new stuff to play with. Sure, laughing in the face of physics while you fling yourself from test chamber to test chamber is plenty of fun, but then things like the light bridges and gels are introduced--the sort of things that make you run faster, jump higher and hit harder. There's an all-new, ridiculously awesome co-op mode to puzzle your way through that lets you take control of not one, not two, but four portals! It's so much fun, you won't mind how frustrating it can get.

So, yeah, the sequel is great--one of those rare games that eclipses its predecessor by coming up with pretty much stronger everything: more story, more characters, more moments that keep me awake at night. Because, holy hell, GLaDOS.
I just want to say that video games tend not to scare me very much when I'm not playing them. I generally feel pretty well protected by the fourth wall. Even one of the most disturbing bosses I've fought doesn't really bother me, unless I'm dumb enough to play the dwarf bit in DA:O while alone at night. And when I started playing Portal 2, I knew that GLaDOS was going to be in the game. There's no way she could not be. 

I say this how you can understand how utterly terrified I am of this character. Below, find an accurate description of my reaction when she awakes:

And I may as well just come out and say it: GLaDOS was the only video game character I've ever had a nightmare about. 

...Don't judge me!

So what makes her so damn terrifying? 

"Didn't we have some fun though? Remember when the platform was sliding into the fire pit and I said 'Goodbye' and you were like 'no way' and then I was all, 'We pretended we were going to murder you'? That was great!"

I do not like that woman.

I've come up with a few broad categories that explain just what makes her so scary. First of all, it's pretty obvious that GLaDOS has not familiarized herself with the Laws of Robotics. Oh, and the fact that she's Robot God.

First of all, GLaDOS is omniscient. 

She knows everything that is happening in the facility. You can destroy cameras and find hiding spots where she can't see you, but she is always aware of your movements. The only time that you are really free from her gaze is when you defy her, breaking out of the testing chambers in the first game or preparing to face her down in the second. It's not impossible to escape from her, no, but it is pretty damn hard, and you'll need to be quick, smart, and aware of everything to do it.

Secondly, she is omnipotent.

GLaDOS is life and death at Aperture Science. When you finally escape from her in the second game, it's only because she lets you.  She often controls what resources you have available in the various test chambers and even determines your actions during gameplay. Like killing the beloved Companion Cube. (It's a box with a heart with it. It was sad when you had to burn it. Now can we please, as a fandom, move on?) She could kill you at any moment and simply chooses not to, because, well...

GLaDOS is cruel.

She tries to murder you and she killed everyone in the Enrichment Center (on the worst Take Your Daughter to Work Day ever) with a deadly neurotoxin for, as far as I can tell--shits'n'giggles. That's the technical term. And then there's all the emotional manipulation she subjected to who knows how many test subjects before Chell, culminating in the death of the Companion Cube. And that's just the first game. In the second game, things get worse before they get better. Then they get better, and then worse all over again. Because what's worse than a psychotic computer who, essentially, runs the world? A vengeful psychotic computer who is really fucking pissed at you. 

Another thing of note: It seems like GLaDOS is the femme fatale of the game. Yes, that's kind of a weird characterization to attribute to a giant robot. But the minute she loses her morality core, her voice becomes smooth, less robotic, and definitely going into the realm of seductive. Oh, and then there's things like this:

There's a joke about hard drives somewhere in here.

Yes, that's GLaDOS being compared to a bound and gagged woman hanging upside down from the ceiling. The thing is, it's not just some crazy fan thing: GLaDOS's appearance was based on Botecelli's The Birth of Venus. Huh.

That awkward moment when you remember that your mom reads your blog, and you just posted a picture like that on it.

So, there you have it: the single most terrifying video game character I've ever had the joy of  playing with. 

Even a good villain, though, is nothing without a protagonist to cheer for, and that brings us to Chell.

There's a certain amount of caution you have to take when analyzing silent protagonists. If you want to do it well, you have to make sure that you're not attributing your own traits to them. (This is one of the reasons why I believe the Twilight series is so popular--Bella is such a vapid character that it's very easy to put yourself in her shoes.) Even without speaking, though, you can at least glean a little bit about Chell. 

First of all, Chell is crazy smart. It might take me twenty tries to complete a level, but in-universe, Chell only has one chance to figure out the puzzle without getting shot, vaporized, incinerated, drowned in muck, or lasered to death. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't last very long if I were a test subject at Aperture. Hell, I don't deal with 3D well enough in real life, even without a computer trying to murder me. There are some other small, blink-and-you'll-miss-it hints about Chell's intelligence, too: when you walk past the old potato battery science projects, you can see her name and the largest one there. 

Along the same lines of Chell being scary smart, she's also resourceful. I'd like to think that people can be clever when their lives are on the line, but I think most of us would panic if we were trapped inside an aging laboratory with nothing to help us escape but a potato battery and a device that's hardly a weapon. It's not a lot to work with, really--so being able to use your enemy's tactics against them is freaking genius. 

So: female hero who solves her problems by using her brains instead of brawn. The sexiest thing about her is probably her boots. Because, holy hell, those are some fantastic boots. A nice change for ladies in games. But there's one more reason why I love Chell so much.

You don't notice she's female.

I know how weird that sounds, almost contradictory to the rest of the blog. But there's no one making her prove that she's just as good as the guys. There's no one going, "You're a credit to women! Everyone knows that women have poor spatial relations!" There is never any reference to Chell's sex. 

I find this absolutely wonderful. 

I want to get a couple things out on the table before I go any further. I'm not one of those, "Men and women are equal at everything!" kind of people. On a biological level, men and women are just programmed differently. It's simply a fact of life. Take a stereotype we all know and, well...know: "Girls are better at reading than boys." 

The reason behind this is because testosterone slows the development of the left hemisphere, hence, girls develop reading skills faster. But this is a broad generalization: there are many men whose language skills are better than mine, and there are women whose language skills are worse than mine. Biology shows us what tends to happen, but not what is true of all people.  SCIENCE!

The point that I'm trying to get to (but somehow seemed to have wandered off from) is that, yes, there are differences between men and women that we can't do anything about. Unless you work for Torchwood, or something. But it doesn't need to be a factor in how we treat people. Chell's sex is never mentioned, and hell, most gamers forget they're playing as a woman. Portal 2 is one of the rare games where I feel there really is gender equality: because you forget all about it.

Tl;dr: GLaDOS is fucking terrifying, and it's perfectly reasonable if you have nightmares about her.

Image Credits:
Upside down GLaDOS originally found here: http://www.game-ism.com/2008/04/04/still-alive-shes-free/