female characters: Rachel (the demon slayer)
her design:
Rachel is a great example of female character taking the stereotypical feminine role, as you can see from this image her proportions are designed to show off her bust and hips, these are the areas associated with desire and by enlarging these areas the male eye is drawn.
Rachels character is that of a dangerous demon hunter that can handle her self, however the way her clothes and armor don't cover all of her body would suggest that the armor is just for show and provides little protection (her stomach is completely reveal making it a soft target)
her pose not just in this image but the poses she makes within the game its self are designed to be seductive as shows by the image below.
as you can see in this scene rachel has her body leaning to the side with her chest pushed out, her eyes are looking away from the viewer while she holds a gun in her right hand, you may think that the gun is a sign of power and in some ways it is however the gun is pointing up in the air rather at a target or delivering a action.
in the end of the game Rachel falls back on her feminine routes and gets saved by Ryu in the last cut-scene.
Ryu:
Ryu is the main protagonist in this game and is shown as a highly masculine figure, as you can seen by his character design, his clothes cover most of his body with only his arms showing and as you can see the only reason the designer has done this is to show that Ryu is highly muscular.
conclusion:
in conclusion i would say that even though Rachel is a strong female character she has been overly sexualised for the viewer to make her more appealing, this over sexualisation has been a topic of debate for a while as there are two apposing arguments one that says that the girls in games are what girls aspire to be (sexually attractive to get male/ female attention) the other argument is that this is just stereotyping all females.
here is a video by gaijin goomba debating troper vs women : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xqvjw3Z_-dA
Bayonetta
Bayonetta the witch
her design:
to say that Bayonetta design is over sexualised would be a understatement for the following reasons, first of all is the way she is dressed in tight latex like clothing that shows off her as if she wasn't wearing anything at all, the clothes design also reveals areas which should be protecting in combat (her breast and her back)
the second point about this characters design is all special moves are based on different fetishes mainly focusing around bondage, Bayonetta ties up her enemies and kills them slowly usually involving painfully forms of sexual torture as shown below.
on the other hand even though she is overly sexualised she is not a weak character as unlike rachel that needs ryu to save her from time to time bayonetta slays angels and gods with out the need for a strong male figure too guild her.
conclusion:
in my opinion bayonetta is designed to appeal to the gaze however she has been designed in such a way that is more teasing to the watcher rather than giving the gazer what he or she is hoping to see, a good example of this would be her finishers called climaxes, these moves show her clothes turn into ribbons and then showly remove them self from her body, before anything X rated is shown the camera changes taking the gazer way from her location.
over all conclusion about the gaze in video games:
in my opinion there is always going to be some form of stereotyping when it comes the gender, this is because as humans we are always seeking more if all games were of normal people doing normal things we might as well just do them for real rather than watch an avatar do it in our place.
No comments:
Post a Comment