In my recent discussions of gender-related marketing missteps various companies made at E3, I highlighted the Tomb Raider demonstration that was part of the Microsoft press event.
Over the course of the week since E3 and since I wrote my first complaint on the matter, I've received rather a lot of push-back about that choice. Some see and hear the same problems I did; others only see a 2012 game they're interested in playing, and question where offense might possibly be given.
Let me state clearly and up front: I do not know if I have a problem with this game. I have not played it; no-one has. It won't be available until 2012. As it happens I quite like the genre (not to mention my interest in having more female protagonists) and so on a personal level I actually strongly hope that the game is better than its debut. The important thing to understand is this: "I have problems with this marketing and with the way in which the designers and publishers chose to present this game and this character" is not the same statement as "this game sucks."
And in fact, I have problems with this marketing, and with the way in which the designers and publishers chose to present this game and this character.
Here's the demo in question:
My major objections mainly stem from the first 1:00 of the video. Try this exercise: put on your headphones or speakers, hit "play," and then either close your eyes or bring up another window over the video so that you can't see it.
Would you be comfortable with someone hearing you listening to that, but unable to see your screen? What do you think they'd think you're watching? Do you hear a strong, in-charge, admirable protagonist?
I hear the victimization of a young woman. I hear a vulnerable girl breathing heavily, in pain and in fear. I hear unpleasant overtones and associations. And what I hear makes me squirm in my seat uncomfortably, cringing, while I watch it to write this post -- because the way I hear it, I can't tell if the player is meant to be put in Lara's position, or to fetishize it.
And so that's where we begin: with Lara tied up, squirming, in shadows, and then moaning and screaming for the player's benefit. This is our introduction to this character: bound, scared, and squealing. It's the first we see of her, the opening line of the story this demo wants to tell us, the first impression. It doesn't just happen along the way; this is where we come in.
I get that they want to replace the damsel in distress trope with the strong girl rescues herself one. And I do approve of that message, in one way. In another way, both add up to victimization of a female character, and that's a pattern our current stories don't exactly lack.
And so that's where we begin: with Lara tied up, squirming, in shadows, and then moaning and screaming for the player's benefit. This is our introduction to this character: bound, scared, and squealing. It's the first we see of her, the opening line of the story this demo wants to tell us, the first impression. It doesn't just happen along the way; this is where we come in.
I get that they want to replace the damsel in distress trope with the strong girl rescues herself one. And I do approve of that message, in one way. In another way, both add up to victimization of a female character, and that's a pattern our current stories don't exactly lack.
The issue is that while they've made Lara Croft a physically and visually strong and determined character (and I do appreciate her plausible physical build and sensible pants), they choose at every moment to undermine that with her screams, her fear, and her injuries. I don't know of a similar male hero whose injuries, sustained while playing, are ever so graphically painful and detrimental.**
And as it happens, this year's E3 gave us as good an immediate compare-and-contrast as we're going to get. The Uncharted franchise was inspired by Tomb Raider, and now the Tomb Raider reboot, in turn, owes some inspiration to Uncharted. The Continuing Adventures of Nathan Drake, The Attractive Everyman Version of Lara, had a debut demo during Sony's press conference.
Listen to what they chose to present of Nathan Drake at the Sony press event: Drake grunts. He groans. He shouts. He comments snarkily. He exhibits strong displeasure with being shot at. He suffers. But he's not victimized. Drake is an active agent in his own demo, choosing to be on the ship where the story we're shown begins. It's not, "Oh no! They must have heard me [screaming]!" He doesn't want to be found, so he doesn't run around screaming.
In these five-minute videos, we see two different explorations of character. With Drake, we see strength through action. With Lara, we see "strength" created by showcasing vulnerability. His demo opens with active behavior; hers opens with reactive behavior. Can you imagine the two characters' roles reversed? Because that's the real problem. I can, in fact, and I would play those games -- but instead, we have yet another fragile woman. This Lara Croft, in this demo, deliberately has a physical and emotional vulnerability that earlier incarnations of her character did not have, and that is not generally present in male characters. It's not progressive just because they're doing it to Lara Croft; it's regressive because we've tread this ground before.
This desire to take our strong female player character and literally torture her isn't actually all in my head. Or if it is, I'm certainly not the only one. The Wikipedia entry on the game, at the time I write this, reads:
Fresh from academy and in search of lost relics, a 21-year-old Lara Croft journeys to an island off the coast of Japan aboard the Endurance, a salvage vessel helmed by Captain Conrad Roth. Before anchoring at bay, the ship is cleaved in two by an unforeseen storm leaving Lara separated from any other survivors and washed ashore. She must endure physical and emotional torture in order to survive the island.
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| Because it will someday change: screenshot - 4:00 p.m. EDT, 16 June 2011. |
I don't know, and can't know right now, how truly representative either demo I've linked is of the games they are promoting. It is entirely possible that Nathan Drake spends two hours tied up and tortured and that Lara Croft never again screams in 40 hours of narrative. It'll be many months yet before anyone can have anything to say about the rebooted Lara Croft, adventurer and protagonist. If the Wikipedia article is correct, however, her new game is another iteration on "let's torture the attractive young white girl" survival horror.
Set aside the future. In the present, the now, I'm tired of this same-old, same-old in marketing and demonstration. The line between "victim" and "survivor" is a tricky distinction to navigate, and frankly I don't trust most game designers to be up to the task. Torturing a female character is not new, it is not edgy, and in a media world that's still deeply oversaturated with images of victims and underpopulated with images of functional women, it's not a good idea.
*****
For further reading: A friend linked to this post this morning, on "manpain." It's a good, long look at a general phenomenon in media and how male and female suffering on screen are used, displayed, and written. And I realized something about the Tomb Raider demo while reading it: the manpain -- "oh, God, I suffer watching this woman's agony, pay attention to how horrible I think this is -- is meant to be the player's. Lara is in the refrigerator to drive the player forward, which puts us right back in male gaze territory.
*****
For further reading: A friend linked to this post this morning, on "manpain." It's a good, long look at a general phenomenon in media and how male and female suffering on screen are used, displayed, and written. And I realized something about the Tomb Raider demo while reading it: the manpain -- "oh, God, I suffer watching this woman's agony, pay attention to how horrible I think this is -- is meant to be the player's. Lara is in the refrigerator to drive the player forward, which puts us right back in male gaze territory.
**The one truly vulnerable and prone to injury male protagonist I can think of is Old Snake, from Metal Gear Solid 4. His vulnerabilities come from engineered illness and premature old age, rather than from his gender, but I will grant the exception. That microwave tunnel is brutal.
