Safe Sexy Dance: The Male Gaze, Bayonetta and the Dissonant Resonance of a Humanized, Sexualized Female Character

So, the male gaze in film. In her seminal essay ‘Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema’, Laura Mulvey points out that in classical Hollywood film, women fill the role of passively accepting male views and desires. This leaves them as simple supports or rewards for men, as they are 'controlled and fetishized' over the course of the story. Since I seem to have subconsciously made the choice that this blog is going to be mostly about video games now, let’s think about the male gaze in a medium where control over any playable character is a defining feature. In one of her outstanding series of videos 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games', Anita Sarkesian points out that, from the introduction of the first up-right arcade console in the 80s, the fetishization of women has been a recurrent theme of advertising games to a straight male audience. Models in these adverts are mostly shown pushing themselves up against the peripherals in whatever skimpy gear was most thematically suitable (leopard skin bikinis for jungle adventures etc.). Sarkesian says that, just like the games, the women are presented in a way that suggests they are there for men to play with. Without more complex representation within the game or wider culture generally, women, regardless of race or sexuality, are made to identify with this dehumanizing perspective before interacting with the machine itself, however temporarily. Even when women are the game’s protagonist, their first order of business is to sexually appeal to male players, whether in leather cat suits, breast plates that are more breast than plate or whatever personal peccadillo the game developers want to take for a spin.

Few examples of the hyper-sexualisation of female characters in video games are as fitting as Bayonetta. While she is ludicrously objectified from the very start of the game, a bizarrely significant effort is made to humanise Bayonetta herself. The balanced competition between performing for and being empowered under the male gaze by the game’s end results in a unique resonance between two characterisations that conventional wisdom would suggest are at fundamental cross purposes. Taking my lead from the acrobatic star of the show, I’ll try and manoeuvre out of the blind alley reasoning of whether or not Bayonetta’s sexuality ‘belongs’ to her that dominates discussion of this game and pick out what made this cheese-y, convoluted and poorly scripted action game have such an unexpected effect on me. From there, I’ll make the point that Bayonetta’s primary provocation is directed towards making space for characters that are sexy, human and, an added twist, female.

 *Spoilers to follow*

As much as I love Bayonetta, I still have to bend over backwards to set up a coherent plot synopsis for it (the game itself cuts through any primers as quickly as possible to get to the boobies it takes such pleasure in). Bayonetta is the last survivor of the two hundred year-long Witch Hunts throughout Europe. The hunts came about from a schism within the controlling forces of the world, the Umbran Witches and the Lumen Sages. The pact of non-interaction between women whose power comes from the demons of Inferno and men whose divine energy comes from the angels of Paradiso was broken when a witch and a sage had a child together. The ensuing battle for total control of both omnipotent gems known as the Eyes of the World, one trusted to each clan, resulted in the witches’ near extinction. 20 years later, Bayonetta survives on a new pact with Inferno. In exchange for information of her forgotten past, she guards freshly buried corpses and kills the angelic host that come to claim them for Paradiso, leaving them up for grabs by the hordes of the underworld. When she finds out that both Eyes of the World are under the Lumen Sages control, she must fight through redoubled onslaughts of angels to prevent the puritanical priests from recreating the world in their image. 

Writing out the plot, accurately or otherwise, makes Bayonetta sound much more complex than either the box art or gameplay suggests. From the start, the experience of this game can be described as, in Sarkeesian’s glorious estimation, a choose your own porno adventure. All the potential for Bayonetta as a character is boxed in by hypersexuality. The Umbran Witch power of acrobatic untouchability is expressed by her doing stripper moves, leaning back and wrapping her legs around switches as she pulls them. Being kick-ass and physically domineering mean she is a dominatrix, complete with full-body leather cat suit and overuse of the word ‘naughty’. Her knowledge of Umbran lore means she’s a sexy librarian, complete with British accent and constant salutations to glasses fetishists. What results is an odd combination of the epic, gripping presence of Storm from X-Men and the maniacal and innuendo obsessed bartender Mad Moxxi from Borderlands. 

Even so, three fetishes just weren’t enough for PlatinumGames. To regain health and attack or defence power, Bayonetta sucks seductively on lollipops. More egregiously, completing attack combos successfully forms ‘Wicked Weaves’; anthropomorphic limbs made up of Bayonetta’s hair that erupt from demonic portals to knock murderous angelic choirs for a loop. Since Bayonetta’s outfit is also made up of her hair (seriously), the summoning of these limbs cause most of her clothes to temporarily come off (SERIOUSLY). Sarkesian points out that the player, testing the boundaries of freedom offered by the game, is indirectly encouraged to literally strip her. Still not satisfied, any of Bayonetta’s other special moves end with her in a sexualized pose followed by the snap of a camera lens. Without contest, the gameplay of Bayonetta is the domain of the male gaze.

What's interesting about Bayonetta comes later, when the focus is on what isn’t seen. Bayonetta’s witch powers make her invisible to humans. Also, avoiding being hit or touched by angelic enemies over the course of combat fill her magic gauge to power Wicked Weaves and special moves. While the player is again privileged by always having Bayonetta in sight and grasping the controller is closer than most the angels will get to touching her, the first subversive edge to the game is revealed once Bayonetta takes too many hits and ‘dies’. Choosing to quit the game causes Bayonetta to regain consciousness and scream in terror just as she is dragged to Inferno by thousands of grasping demonic hands. Contrasting this with her swaggering confidence during gameplay shows her as a fetishized object that welcomes and enjoys the male gaze but who does not want to be touched. 

Bayonetta’s invisibility can then be seen to place her outside the patriarchal double bind of female sexuality. This contradictory social structure says that ‘pure’ women must not draw heterosexual male attention and must dress modestly and reject any sexual contact. However, if women reject men’s advances, they are equally disgusting as ‘impure’ women who welcome the male gaze and have many sexual partners; those that touch them in a way that the rejected man feels entitled to do. In the context of this game, women operating under either of these categorizations render them visible to humans by this virgin/whore dichotomy. Outside the social structure of the human world entirely, Bayonetta cannot be seen or touched by anything other than angels and demons. The power of the Umbra Witch is to resist simple, sexist categorization by men outside of her realm of influence.

From here, the potential for Bayonetta to actually be an positive representation of womanhood starts to slowly rise, subverting her objectification and showing her dominance. This growth is shaky at first, overbalancing from the lack of world building. Vigrid is a much less stable location for the off-hand references to fairy tales as well as Dante’s Inferno inspired theology. As a result, it’s never clear whether Cheshire, the male secondary protagonist of the story, is a regular human or the human form of The Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. His insistence on being called ‘Luka’ suggests the former. Since there’s little evidence for the latter, I’ll assume he’s just a regular womanising photojournalist with a cool scarf from here on. Pursuing Bayonetta for killing his father (his mother is never seen or mentioned) after he freed her from her amnesia inducing nap at the bottom of a lake, Cheshire seeks to capture her on film to show Vigrid the witch hunts aren’t over. He continualy fails to manage this, since Bayonetta’s ‘true form’ doesn’t show up on his camera and she is invisible to him unless she wants to be seen. This failure of men to capture Bayonetta under the gaze that cameras represent then subverts the special move snapshot animation that objectifies her. Whatever sexual pose she strikes is neither recorded nor all of what she is. Her performance for the male gaze in this instance is fleeting, as her resistance to sight and touch returns when she throws herself back into combat.

You can't see me

While this choice could just priviledge the player's constant sight of Bayonetta through the fluid camera work of gameplay, their discovering of her 'true form' is also fragmented by the style of the game's cutscenes. Taking place over comic book like frames of 35mm film with constantly moving surroundings but stationary characters, a narrative space almost devoid of the male gaze performance of gameplay is opened up. These scenes construct Bayonetta's past, with each scene giving more of her backstory as rewards for clearing gameplay sections. The essential seperation of story and play in games are used together to show Bayonetta's 'true form'.

The resonant balance between male gaze and female empowerment that makes Bayonetta so fascinating takes full shape with the inclusion of Cereza, who contributes even more to the convoluted story, its exaggerated structure and the thematic undercurrent of agency that the game unexpectedly makes its focus. After her introduction as an translucent, human-realm dwelling shadow in the game's early chapters, Cereza, a five year old girl who can see and be seen by the human, hellish and heavenly worlds is saved from angelic execution by Bayonetta. She instantly assumes this makes Bayonetta her ‘mummy’. At first unloading the child on Cheshire to maintain her adventurous manoeuvrability, Bayonetta is convinced of Cereza’s worth after she applauds and cheers mummy’s ability to kick divine ass. Cereza’s identification with and appropriation of the male gaze centred combat brings her more into Bayonetta’s world, resulting in two escort missions where Cereza’s continued safety leads the player through check points. The most interesting of these missions comes as you escape a sinking plane after a battle with Jeanne, another hypersexual Umbra Witch who works for Paradiso and the Lumen Sages. Assaulted by angels on all sides, Bayonetta casts a spell that places Cereza into an opaque shield that the angels cannot break. Here, Bayonetta protects Cereza from the angel’s onslaught and from the dehumanizing male gaze of gameplay sections while still allowing her to watch her own performance for it. In doing this, Bayonetta admits the appeal of identification of the male gaze to a female observer and creates a safe space for their pleasurable watching as well, complicating the simple titillation that pervades the gameplay.

This unexpected self-awareness charges Bayonetta’s narrative with a pro-feminist energy that fully allows an overlooking of its confusing story. In a rush of clunky exposition, it’s revealed to Bayonetta that not only has she been carrying one of the Eyes of the World all along (safely secured in her boob window) but that Cereza is her past self : the child whose birth broke the truce between the witches and sages. Returning Cereza to the past (somehow, magic I guess), a refrain of ‘Fly Me to the Moon’, used in gameplay to highlight Bayonetta’s untouchability and freedom takes on a sad, vulnerable tone as she sings Cereza to sleep. Here is where Bayonetta gains most all its feminist credentials. Cereza, witnessing the sexist human world of the virgin/whore dichotomy and Bayonetta’s joy outside of it but not the fact Bayonetta is her future self chooses to follow in her mummy’s pistol stiletto footsteps. Bayonetta realizes that the choice she made to be an Umbra Witch to avoid the in-game marginalisation of mothers means she is forever at a distance from being able to care for and nurture another as a mother would. The player watches this dominatrix/stripper/sexy librarian connect with a deeper, non-sexual part of herself and so, in turn, do we. Even under the male gaze, Bayonetta not only makes its central character’s agency part of its overall make-up but also presents admiration by a  female observer as more genuine and humanising than that of the male gaze in revealing Bayonetta's 'true form'.

The structure of the game then takes this affecting message and exaggerates it in a way that counter-balances the objectification of its start. The end of the final ‘chapter’ of Bayonetta trails off into a down note where our sexy human hero is captured by final boss Balder (also her father…I don’t care, I’m invested) who will use the newly active Eyes of the World to rebuild the universe according to his perspective. In the ‘Epilogue’, the player takes control of Jeanne, betraying Paradiso to save Bayonetta and stop her being forced to create life she has no say in. Swapping the tying up of loose plot threads with the final climax of the game, the exaggerated structure of Bayonetta builds to a critical mass of positive representation. In response, Bayonetta herself swaps the passionate but marginalising vulnerability of motherhood that is cut off from her with the equal, mutually protecting companionship of her ‘Umbran Sister’ Jeanne. Within themselves and between each other, agency and sexualisation go hand in hand. The landing has finally been stuck on a perfectly balanced glut of dehumanizing male gaze at the start of the game and humanizing female agency at the end, leaving Bayonetta left with nothing but the curtain call.

No butts before besties: Jeanne's agency and sexualisation balancing out Bayonetta's own

This grand finale reveals the tension at the very centre of Bayonetta’s resonant (or is it dissonant?) heart. Not only are we treated to Bayonetta pole dancing over the credits, she also performs a post-credits burlesque show. This post credit sequence, headlined by Bayonetta and Jeanne’s vanishing clothes, leaves us wondering whether the amount of character development they went through can justify this either freshly dehumanizing or emphatically empowering end.

This final split comes down to the dissonance of the male gaze and the extent to which audiences, of any gender, identify with it. Given it’s underscoring of Bayonetta’s choice to express her sexuality so overtly and making the power she gains from it an explicit part of gameplay, I felt more than happy to indulge in this performance. Thinking more about it though, there’s no way my reaction is universal. Those who suffer objectification in the wider world and are alienated by it's constant presence in games have been made to wade through this same objectification before Bayonetta is humanized. It would have been simple, if less structurally interesting, if her agency were highlighted from the game’s beginning.This latter perspective tips the balance I thought the game had settled on into a less than complete victory for women in gaming.

Still, I don’t feel Bayonetta has completely failed in its goal because of this imbalance. Instead, its two pronged provocation of the male gaze makes a challenge to the cultural problem of objectification and sexualisation in general. This game, with a contorted, hypersexualised woman on its front cover, still found space to humanise her.  The suggestion that sexualisation and empowerment work independently as well as in tandem would be well learned by wider media. If there were more representation of women humanized by their choices, their consensual sexualisation or both at once, the unsteady friction of this final performance would be of little concern. Further, Bayonetta's seperation of narrative and gameplay shows that humanization can be shown independently of sexualization as well as resonate together as Bayonetta and Jeanne's sisterhood shows. In a culture and industry that struggles to represent or imagine women outside of their appeal to men, Bayonetta makes room for both appealing to the dehumanizing male gaze while also counteracting it. All that follows is for more games to follow suit.

Hey, developers? She’s looking at you.

Some references and further research:

‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ by Laura Mulvey: should be widely available to most and I imagine will make an appearance in most feminist film criticism 101 books

Feminist Frequency on the male gaze in video games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZPSrwedvsg&index=6&list=PLn4ob_5_ttEaA_vc8F3fjzE62esf9yP61

...and on Bayonetta and it's utterly despicable advertising strategy in Japan:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbihPTgAql4

The influence of burlesque on Bayonetta:

http://midnightresistance.co.uk/articles/bayonetta-and-burlesque

http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/bayonetta-1415/bayonettas-high-flying-pistol-stiletto-burlesque-1491414/ - some particularly fantastic analysis of Bayonetta’s gameplay

To see the male gaze in action, watch Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Rear Window. Notice how all the unsuspecting women under Jeffries’ camera are defined by their body parts?

"Nice work, boyo": An adoration of the Bioshock series

Falling or flying?

*EXTENSIVE SPOILERS FOR BIOSHOCK, BIOSHOCK INFINTE AND BIOSHOCK BURIAL AT SEA.*

I set this March aside for replaying the entire Bioshock series, anticipating the release of the final DLC which would signal the end of not only my favourite game franchise but also Irrational Games, their creators. As I say goodbye to the story of two cities filled with horror, corruption and infinitesimal yet irrepressible hope, I realise how it, more than any other media I’ve experienced, contains and defines the human experience. In exploring what I found in these games, I hope only to share these practical lessons with you.

Above all else, the Bioshock series is a master class in world building. The ceremonial unveiling of the underwater city of Rapture in the first game, with its neon billboard studded high rise towers glowing eerily both from within and from the spotlights dancing over the external structures remains the most overwhelming sensation I’ve experienced playing any game.

The grip on the player this revelation takes never ebbs due to the city’s distinctive history. Andrew Ryan, the founder of Rapture, sought to escape the post World War II nuclear arms race by building his underwater utopia and inviting the finest artists, scientists and doctors to live under the rule of ‘enlightened self-interest’ whereby they are free to live any way they choose without any kind of governmental restriction. The scientific miracle discovery of the ADAM stem cell that grants Rapture’s residents the ability to teleport, move objects with their mind and fire lightning from their hands made the city the progressive ideal Ryan wished for.  The side effects of the drug driving all who use it homicidally insane brings a new arms race to Rapture, with all of the cities progress ceasing while each resident hordes more and more ADAM to increase their power and destroy their competition in a brutal class based civil war. 

As your imagination is flooded by Rapture, your moral character is also tested.  So as not to be wasteful, orphan girls implanted with the sea slug which secretes the stem cell patrol Rapture syringing ADAM from the corpses of citizens who didn’t last under the cities Social Darwinist demands. Forced to horde ADAM to survive your imprisonment in the city, you are given the choice to give these children back their wills for only a small ADAM return, or to ‘harvest’ all the reserves these ‘Little Sisters’ carry, killing them in the process.   The cut scene that is cued by choosing the latter is so traumatic that a player feels like they’ve lost a piece of their souls within this broken, isolated city.

Pragmatism at a price

While it could be broadly identified as a ‘dystopia’, the detailed atmosphere of Rapture built by audio diaries recording people’s experiences of the city, the uniquely off-putting ADAM advertisements and propaganda announcements over tannoy systems make it a dystopia like no other.

Evolve today!

Developing beyond the unique creation of Rapture, Bioshock Infinite, the third game in the series, offers the flying city of Columbia; a utopia with a dystopia hiding inside of it.  Through the eyes of desperately indebted private detective Booker DeWitt, the player explores the floating paradise held aloft by atoms suspended in space/time which was founded by Father Zachary Hale Comstock in order to spread America’s message of freedom and peace amongst men throughout the world. Being a symbol of American civilization in 1912 unfortunately means that Columbia is also founded on vicious white supremacy, with the city elite building golden statues of John Wilks Booth and mythologizing his brave, necessary assassination of Lincoln who was misguided enough to abolish slavery.

'What did the Great Emancipator *really* emancipate the Negro from?' - Father Comstock

Pulled apart by this outlandish ideological contradiction, tears in the fabric of reality appear all over the city that can be opened by Elizabeth, the young woman imprisoned in an angel statue that Booker is charged with rescuing. 

Escaping the city involves traversing these tears, allowing you to see the city from both the perspective of the oppressed class of black and Irish workers known as the Vox Populi and the tyrannically bigoted ruling Founders. The corruptions and hypocrisies of Columbia in true Bioshock tradition come to indict the player themselves, as Booker’s uncovering of the city’s secrets only bring out his own brutality and destructiveness.

As much as these cities are characters in themselves, it is the unforgettable people that make these places their home that secures Bioshock’s prestige.  Along with the cruelly indifferent Andrew Ryan, who taxes the oxygen produced by the trees in his underwater park, Rapture swarms with enemies who could easily support their own horror movies. Among the most distinct are Doctor Steinman, the plastic surgeon turned vivisectionist who seeks the perfect human face with the supernatural powers of ADAM at his fingertips and Sander Cohen, the frustrated performance artist who takes to encasing his protégés in clay to express his muse. 

'ADAM denies us any excuse for not being beautiful' - Steinman

It’s insubstantial to talk about these characters as end of level bosses, since the fights against them involve little differentiation from coming up against normal ‘splicers’, the aforementioned psychotic ADAM addicts that make up Rapture’s population.  The terror felt when facing enemies in Bioshock is always subordinate to tragedy; you aren’t fighting criminals, aliens or zombies, just people who have ended up destroying themselves in the pursuit of absolute freedom. 

While Bioshock Infinite exhibits the same level of detail in exploring the impotent, self-congratulatory despot Father Comstock, the affable slave tycoon Fink and the righteous but sinister Vox Populi leader Daisy Fitzroy, it asserts itself as my favourite game of the series (and of all time) for introducing me to Elizabeth. Both inquisitive and soulful while plagued with uncertainty, she repeatedly questions the barbarism Booker commits while trying to escape Columbia, at one point knocking him unconscious with a wrench once she realises his selfish motivations for freeing her.

'Are you real?'

The exemplary human tragedy of the Bioshock series flows from Elizabeth, having the freedom to change reality around her but being forced to ascent to Booker’s violent and myopic view of the world to prevent her being dragged back to her tower by Songbird, the giant mechanical bird that was her jailer.  
 

Stripped of her innocence and her optimism, Elizabeth nonetheless asserts herself as dominant once she gains full control over her powers after destroying the tower that was her prison. Accessing every viewpoint in the multiverse, she discovers that Booker and Comstock are the same person, with the only difference between them being which of them believes they deserve salvation of the atrocities they committed in the Boxer Rebellion and Battle of Wounded Knee.  Drowning Booker in a baptismal lake, Elizabeth, the damsel in distress freed from the bonds of this overused trope by Bioshock Infinite’s metaphysical subject matter, saves the game’s hero and kills its villain at the same time.

 The stunning twists in the Bioshock series come as a direct result of the intimate worlds they create. In the first game, you are lead to comprehend Rapture and its history by your guide Atlas, a socialist organiser who takes on the role of your shoulder angel to Ryan’s shoulder devil, each hacking into your remote radio at different intervals. Taking on the task of avenging Atlas’ murdered family by killing Ryan, the kind of brute logic the action genre take as read, proves to be a part of Atlas long con to control Rapture himself.

Rapture’s ability to reveal the hypocrisy and incapacity of its citizens extends to the player, as killing Ryan has indicted them in the corruption that defines the villains of the game. Defeating Atlas isn’t the end of this moral scrutiny, as the player’s treatment of Little Sisters determines whether you leave the city in peace or bring the Rapture nightmare to the world above the waves when the splicers fall under your control.

The ending of Burial At Sea, so richly complex it can be defined as the fourth and final instalment of the Bioshock series culminates all the particulars of its predecessors to deliver a mournful but inspiring end to a series that characterises itself in those exact  ways. Elizabeth, trapped in Rapture by a recently deceased alternate version of herself, realises that, as a result of Bioshock Infinite’s twist ending, she has been brought into the cycle of violence and revenge that defined Booker’s hypocrisy all along.

Unlike the murderously egotistical members of Rapture’s undersea criminal underworld who only serve themselves, Elizabeth realises that sacrificing herself to eventually free all the Little Sisters, a choice left to the player in the first Bioshock, is the only way to produce anything good from the Rapture disaster. Freeing Atlas from jail and putting his plan to take over Rapture into motion before dying by his hand, Elizabeth’s corruption is washed away and the purity of her sacrifice sings in time with the closing credit rendition of ‘La Vie en Rose’. Elizabeth, in her final moments, mirrors Irrational’s position, leaving us with a pristine, intimate, closed story and bowing out before greed can consume them as well.

Even with Bioshock finishing and Irrational Games closing, for me the series will never truly end. Whenever I realise my own hypocrisies and inadequacies, I will plunge from the clouds of Colombia back into Rapture, to have my self-satisfaction washed away. No longer blinded by self-interest, I will escape the Rapture state of mind by treating others the way I did the Little Sisters; benevolently allowing them opportunities I could have just as easily taken away. This pattern being an inescapable cycle of human nature, the Bioshock story, for those who played it, will never truly end.

Header pic  http://mainlybioshock.tumblr.com/page/97?route=%2Fpage%2F%3Apage

Heads or tails? Bioshock Infinite and Being A Critic

*MAJOR SPOILERS FOR BIOSHOCK INFINITE. IF YOU DON'T PLAY IT AT LEAST ONCE BEFORE READING THIS, I WILL PURSUE LITIGATION AGAINST YOU*

Over Christmas, I chose to write an essay for my American Film and Visual Culture module on the topic of video games. The realisation I could even do that made me do a double take. When one of the games we were told to compare was Bioshock Infinite, I clapped and flailed and debased myself in complete joy. I had already played the game three times and the notion of putting my fan boy gushings on paper for educational merit was a concept that left me squirming in anticipation. Once research time had started, I started trawling the internet for other's thoughts on the game. The only reviews of it I found that were in writing utterly despised Bioshock Infinite. After this shocking discovery, I stepped away from my laptop and once again observed the painful ritual of realising that not everyone agrees with me, as any who dwell online must do every so often. Over the next few weeks I continued to see backlash against the game. One particular series of tweets by Wired editor Laura Hudson forced me out of my cushy world of tolerance. As each new tweet was met by increasing levels of my own derision, I was reminded of the Lutece twins. Bioshock Infinite was a coin. Hudson saw 'heads', a game that is obnoxious, racially insensitive and unengaging. I was looking at 'tails', a scintillating and narratively complex game that pushed me to feverish excitement in all of my play throughs even if I had only played it for banal enjoyment. The more I considered our opinions differences, the more I realised they were very much similar. The only way to reconcile these views is through criticism that goes beyond both mine and Hudson's initial  responses. Luckily, taking on different perspectives is what Bioshock Infinite is all about.

Sticking to the rules/Breaking the rules
Heads: Hudson saying that Bioshock Infinite 'wants to be a movie' because of how unneccesary the gameplay is.

Tails: In essence, all games are episodic movies that you fight your way through. In FPSs, the story is usually put on hold every so often to allow the player to shoot stuff. The fact not everyone instantly realises this is because you're supposed to be immersed in the shooter's perspective and experience the action sequences as developing organically from the game's world. In Bioshock Infinite, Booker has to deal personally with all the chaotic fight sequences throughout the game. After the smoke has cleared after a gun vs mini-gun-wielding-George Washington-robot battle, you head to the locked door that'll allow progression through the story. Elizabeth, the time/space manipulating 'sidekick' of the game, simply pops it open with her hairpin lockpick. With the exception he needs to fill an archetypal requirement of gameplay, zany gun battles, Booker's role is mostly ineffectual, as, if the game allowed it Elizabeth could have unlocked the door and the gun battle could have been avoided completley.

A departure from film is present in that Booker, in effect producing not much more than the camera's view, is still a part of the game. Although he serves little more than to provide the action sections and deliver exposition, Booker's presence is essential in providing the important distinguishment games take from film; the effect an outside perspective has on events. Booker frees Elizabeth, allowing the story to take place and his involvement, like the player's, is essential to making the story progress. Without Booker and the player, the game would not happen. Film does not require this kind of involvement.

All the same, Bioshock Infinite utilises film language to show that it is actually Elizabeth who is the central character. As she gets the majority of close ups and is in centre frame from her introduction onwards in comparison to the other characters in the game, she gains the player's empathy. The fact she questions the morality of Booker's actions and mirrors player's reaction to events, such as wondering who giving guns to a revolutionary underclass will actually help, she is much more engaging and sympathetic than the nihilistic Booker. Even if the story is being told from Booker's perspective, you'd still prefer to be seeing it from Elizabeth's.

Here, Bioshock Infinite activley tells the player to take a different perspective than the one the FPS format gives you. Hudson's focus on the perspective of Booker is probably what made the game so unpalletable, since his ever altering mental state distances the player from his understanding of reality. Focusing on immersion as the deliverer of enjoyment makes the game unsatisfying, as it makes clear the gap between gameplay and story most games try to disguise, the impetus behind the repeated image of Booker reaching out but not being able to touch Elizabeth. Lacking any kind of conventional understandings of how games work left me in a state that could only provide enjoyment, helped all the more by my intense want to do so, not picking up on the departures from game convention Hudson took issue with. Reconciling these opposing opinions is based in recognising how games work and how this architecture can be subverted producing quality, not just enjoyability.

Enjoyability/Quality
Heads: Not only is the game unenjoyable, the story is flat and, in some places, racist as it assimilates ethnic minority characters into faceless 'bad guys'. It is thus a bad game.

Tails: Just because something isn't enjoyable doesn't make it bad. 2001: A Space Odyssey isn't a fun fair for all the family, but it is still one of the greatest movies ever made. With it's slow, weary pacing converting the hopeful magesty of the sci fi genre into cynicism and disillusionment makes the movie disturbing and, as a result, compelling. In attempting this same kind of generic subversion, Bioshock Infinite carries over the amended perspective it asks for from it's gameplay to it's story.

The rebellion of the Vox Populi, the repressed underclass of blacks and Irish in Columbia, is where the story is manipulated most. As you are turned against the Vox after bringing the guns they need to start their revolution through an inter-dimensional 'tear', they begin dressing up in devil hoods. This merges them with the propaganda used against them by the white supremacist population of Columbia in the fair at the start of the game. Here, false representations take over to make for gameplay convenience; they're no longer downtrodden revolutionaries, just faceless demons who need killing. As Booker readily accepts this turn of events, we, not tied to his perspective, are encouraged to question it and notice the irony taking place as Booker must now quell a revolution he helped begin.

In another purposeful manipulation of representation, Daisy Fitzroy, the leader of the Vox is corrupted by power before being stabbed in the back by Elizabeth. Since this encounter seperates Booker and Fitzroy with a wall of glass reminiscent of a cinema screen , the focus on representation against reality is pushed all the more. Taking on the ironic perspective we are told to have on these events, we see that Elizabeth actually saves Daisy from becoming assimilated into the games purposefully superficial presentation of violent revolution. Stabbing her in the back, Elizabeth betrays Fitzroy's development into a false representation and ends the suggestion that revolutionaries are as power hungry as the tyrants they fight.

The revolution chapter of the game is where Bioshock Infinite launches it's critique of escapist fantasy. Having spent the first half of the game slaughtering white supremacists in order to rescue Elizabeth and 'escape' Columbia, going through the tear that gives the Vox their guns puts you in the position of a white supremacist. The notion that, unless they are oppressed, other ethnicities will slaughter white people is a white supremacist fantasy, one that will surely appeal to the under represented Neo-Nazi demographic.  In killing the socially oppressed to further your own needs, Booker to escape Columbia and for the player to be immersed in the game, two conflicting viewpoints need to be taken. If killing one group is justified and killing the other is not, this motivates reflection on the player's part as to how this can be so. If both are justified, you agree with Booker, who, as shown later in the game, has a completley warped and unreliable conception of reality. The ideal, again, is Elizabeth's perspective, who realises that neither is justified. This shows that, to appreciate Bioshock Infinite, enjoyment is not really the goal.

In order to gain this perspective, it is neccesary to follow the game's subtle directives. This cannot be done reacting on the level that only serves to tell you whether something is enjoyable or not. To assess the quality of a piece of media, one must question the perspective that it takes on events as much as the events themselves. This requires moving beyond your own assumptions or desire for simple escapism. Assuming purpose to unconventional (and in some cases offensive) representations can determine whether they are genuine or subversive. Consistency between these subversions are what points to the quality of the media.

Opinion/Fact
Heads: Finally, Hudson linked to a negative review of Bioshock Infinite and said it was 'the only review you need to read'

Tails: If this review was the only thing that needed to be read to understand, appreciate or enjoy the game, it would be fact. That can't be true, because, having analysed the game myself, I've come up with a positive reaction to it. The idea is then that one of us has to be right, the other has to be wrong. Not only does this completley discount interpretation, it assumes there are only two ways of seeing something.  

Bioshock Infinite appeals to me because it represents a convention shift from what I expect from videogames; features Elizabeth, a nuanced woman protagonist who I identified with as a result of this same convention change; and comments on the duality of American interventionism. Booker's struggle to accomodate alternate reality versions of himself into the single perspective format of the game is representative of American revisionist approaches to history, which make them the hero and villain of their own story, as is shown by the revelation at the end of the game that Booker is also Father Comstock. These are things I subjectivley value. The reviewer may not value these things, or may not have thought about them in his interpretation. While both interpretations are entirely valid, neither of them craft fact, but opinion.

Here, as much as it may seem like it, I am not using the 'it's just my opinion' defence. Saying something only comes down to opinion devalues your own ability to discern appealing features of a piece of media and reduces criticism to turgid, pointless strife where no-one can be more or less discerning as another and where Roger Ebert is a glorified message board poster on moviepoopshoot.com. The aim of criticism, in that it cannot capture fact, is to have the most consistent, concise and insightful opinion as possible. In reducing Bioshock Infinite to it's representation of race and unengaging gameplay without taking into account textual reasons for these features, Hudson has produced an opinion inconsistent with the broader context of the game. To gain a better opinion, it is neccesary to challenge your own initial thinking as to why these representations are the way they are, not just how. The worth of an opinion is how many different perspectives it takes into account and the interpretations produced from them. There are infinite perspectives to consider, just like there are infinite derivations of the story of Bioshock Infinite as shown by the metaphysical subtext of the game and in the ending, seeing different Bookers and Elizabeths walking between the never ending sea of lighthouses.

 Having come up against Hudson's different perspective and being able to defend my own, I find I love Bioshock Infinite even more. This shows the value and neccesity of criticism.

Further reading: How I learned about the value of opinions: http://badassdigest.com/2013/07/03/film-crit-hulk-man-of-steel/

How I learned that disagreeing with a media's politics doesn't make it bad: http://chezapocalypse.com/roger-ebert-ted-rall-and-the-act-of-reviewing/?fb_comment_id=fbc_129375233931309_63946_129740240561475#fe51a73c
  



 

Chasing Harley: experiences from Quinngait 2013

In typically flippant fashion, my laziness induced hiatus from wrting this blog will now be broken by some thoughts I need to express about a certain character that most people who were born in the 1990s know very well, against this blog's mission statement. This character is none other than Harley Quinn. Originally a simple box-ticking female henchman (henchperson?) for the Joker in the classic and irreplacable Batman: The Animated Series, Harley brought a charming, Animaniacs-esque influence to the dynamic between the most antithetical hero and villain in pop culture. Her popularity grew and grew until she was placed in DC Universe comic continuity proper in the Batman event No Man's Land.

My superficial interest in the character began changing through her appearences in the Batman: Arkham Asylum/City video game series. I watched with increasing apprehension as a comedic character with viciously tragic undertones began being placed in more and more sexualised outfits. From a hideous combination of a nurse's and french maid's uniform and a slightly more forgivable but still unpleasant corset and leggings in each respective game, the connection I felt to Harley began to grow as I felt she was being being done wrong by. This was my first experience of what the comic community often refer to as certain changes 'ruining their childhoods' as spurious a feeling as that was and continues to be.

My dissatisfaction skyrocketed when I saw Harley's 're-inroduction' to the ill-advised reboot of the DC universe, dubbed 'The New 52'. Not only had the corset returned, it wasn't done up all the way, allowing the viewer an unsettlingly centralised view of Harley's cleavage. The diamond patterned body suit that I had come to love about the character and was still a feature of the Arkham titles vanished, with areas of bare skin acting as replacement, covered only by hot pants and thigh high boots. Similar instances of awful, impractical and down right silly sexualisation of female characters is a huge problem I hadn't taken much notice of in comics up to that point, but this was beyond the pale. This outrage drew me back to Harley Quinns' self-titled mini-series as a way to drown out the horrendous abuses my newly adored character was enduring. This was how my experiences of Quinngait began.

I was interested in classic Harley. She was funny, out-of-control, wacky, deeply scarred by insanity but still maintained a light-hearted nature. I nervously bought Harley Quinn: Night and Day to try and get to know more about her. In this series, Harley is seperated from the manipulative and abusive Joker. Distancing herself from Joker, the embodiement of chaos that had freed Harley from her regular life of order and certainty as a psychiatrist, one thing remained for Harley to pursue: love itself. Dubbing herself 'The Cupid of Crime' and starting up her own gang, she tore Gotham apart in attempts to try and make the private eyes that were chasing her fall in love. She blew up malls, beat Killer Crock to near death with a bowling ball, impersonated Batgirl to set the entire Bat family after her and killed her own henchman without thought or remorse once they got in her way. And yet, the terror and destruction she wrought never felt 'evil' because she was making jokes and laughing gleefully all the way through. Her devotion the blooming romance of her pursuers overshadowed the chaos and destruction she caused. Harley Quinn loved love as much as chaos no matter the form it took. Her pursuing love over chaos made me think Harley could be her own, independent character, regardless of her previous connection to the Joker. She was bringing love, the ultimate unifier, to the chaos of the world that Joker was always looking to spread.

I was ready to do much more with Harley, researching her every appearence and adding them to my eBay watchlist in a state of pure euphoria. Then, once more, DC interfered. Launching a new Harley Quinn ongoing series, they announced they would be letting aspiring artists the chance to draw a page of 'Harley Quinn #0'. The victor of the contest would then have 'broken in' to mainstream comics and would get much more work. The page breakdown was thus:

PANEL 1
Harley is on top of a building, holding a large DETACHED cellphone tower in her hands as lightning is striking just about everywhere except her tower. She is looking at us like she cannot believe what she is doing. Beside herself. Not happy.
PANEL 2
Harley is sitting in an alligator pond, on a little island with a suit of raw chicken on, rolling her eyes like once again, she cannot believe where she has found herself. We see the alligators ignoring her.
PANEL 3
Harley is sitting in an open whale mouth, tickling the inside of the whale’s mouth with a feather. She is ecstatic and happy, like this is the most fun ever.
PANEL 4
Harley sitting naked in a bathtub with toasters, blow dryers, blenders, appliances all dangling above the bathtub and she has a cord that will release them all. We are watching the moment before the inevitable death. Her expression is one of “oh well, guess that’s it for me” and she has resigned herself to the moment that is going to happen

Panel 4 raised hackles, something DC have become used to doing with their increasingly moronic decisions (see the Superman/Wonder Woman romance and the insistence that the Bat family survive on misery, not oxygen). The panel was pilloried against as it 'eroticized suicide' or was 'forcing aspiring artists to depict violence against women'. I was infuriated. At these responses, I mean. Deconstructing the arguments, I came across these propsitions: taking a bath was now an erotic taboo; a naked woman, regardless of neutralising circumstances such as a light tone, eroticizes any scenario where she finds herself; depicting violence against women was endorsing it. I'd rolled my eyes at New 52 Harley, but I never thought I'd have to defend her from this level of unthinking and facile criticism. I thought, "Harley shouldn't need my help! She's independant! She's trying to bring people together, good and evil alike, trying to make the world better, even if she's destroying it in the process!". I felt even closer to her after that.

After the bath incident, I could look past my girl Harley's unfortunate fashion and looked forward to seeing her new adventures in the New 52 continuity. I then decided to pick up Detective comics 23.2, a tie in to 'Villain's Month' that focused on Harley herself. It was pleasent enough reading. It even finally showed her choosing the outfit she wore, removing the problem I had with her new look. I also liked her handing out new portable game consoles to kids after she'd stolen them. That was Harley, always giving, even if what she was giving wasn't hers. Then she detonated bombs in the consoles, murdering hundereds of children all over Gotham in one fell swoop. The comic was released on the 9/11 anniversary. I felt sick, I wanted to cry, I wanted to burn the comic and pretend nothing had ever happened. It was too late. I couldn't look at Harley any more.

I tried to move on. I got involved in a few arguments on the internet in which I was battling against people who shame single mothers, to try and vent some of my misery, and felt like I was doing good to make up for what I had seen Harley do. I was on the mend, when I saw a Facebook post by Max Landis, writer of the involving, unsettling and intermitantly shocking teens-who-happen-to-have-superpowers thriller Chronicle (also too well known a film to warrant a review on here. In brief, it's amazing so watch it). Landis wrote about the atrocity of Harley's Villains Month issue and lamented the bath incident. Then, he said he didn't understand why Harley was trying to be made into a feminist character as her origin and presence in the animated series were sum-up-able as (the post was also in bold) 'A SLUTTY, MURDEROUS MORON'.

The word 'slut' should not exist. It's only reason to exist is to shame women for having sex, even as they are pressured to be hypersexual by the media and male expectations. A woman's morals and her sexuality are entirely unrelated.

Landis centered his judgement on the fact that Harley slept with her teacher's to get through college. Not even considering pointing out that Harley has gotten the drop on Batman through intelligent planning (ie. not a moron) I deployed a lot of stock responses, screaming at the laptop screen about 'slut shaming' and him being oppressive. I framed my argument terribly and was beaten down due to the fact this action would be wrong if a man did it so there was no double standard. I was left stewing in my rage filled failure to protect a character I had almost no feeling left for.

After days of this same fermenting in unrequited anger, I realised why I was so bothered by Harley being called a 'slut'. She represents the tragedy that word invokes. She models herself in every way she thinks the Joker wants, but he takes advantage of her and physically abuses her. She is his victim when she thinks he's her saviour. She projects her love onto the Joker and assumes they're equal, but she's still just his henchman. She is a sympathetic and complex presentation of an all too real mindset. But she's funny, adorable and only wants to bring love into the world.

Landis' post also said that she was too dependant on the Joker to ever be a character unto herself. This brought me full circle back to my analysis of Harley Quinn: Night and Day. She has the elasticity of being committed to love that will allow her to venture on her own, but is in the Joker's orbit as she is in love with chaos. She isn't independant from the Joker in the same way Batgirl is not fully independant from Batman, through her inspiration by Joker and her pursuit of some similar goals.

I had overcome attacks against Harley once more, just as I did for the bath incident. I was finding my love for her once more. My recent purchase of the 'Mad Love' comic gave us a fresh start, away from all the external misogynistic abuse, ill-prepared criticism and mass child murder. I'm looking forward to the getting to know Harley again. I feel safe with her, even if she's dangerous.

(PS: For more information on how fitting yet completley uninspired this piece's title is, watch the heart wrenchingly earnest anti-romcom Chasing Amy for details on how love's overcoming of logic and personality can cause more harm than good)

Adventures into Anime 2 - Black Butler

The defining and most beneficial distinction between Death Note and Black Butler is the sheer amount of feeling put into the latter, even if it does seem at times to be to the expense of the thought behind the former. For me, at least, this difference is what makes Black Butler more memorable, as it paves it's way into your heart, not just your head.

The Phantomhive family are known not just for their wealth and their links to nobility, but also their nurturance of youthful joy in their standing as the most profitable toy industry in Elizabethan England. When the Earl and his wife die in an all consuming fire and their son, Ciel, is kidnapped and tortured by the perpetrators, the Phantomhive estate fell into tragic obscurity. After two years of public absence, Ceil returns to resume the duties of his birthright, accompanied by the charming and seemingly infallible butler Sebastian. Seeking a way to return his family name to proud reverence once again, Ceil takes on London's criminal underworld in an effort to subject them to the same pain and humiliation he suffered at their hands, with Sebastian following him in every endeavour. While waging war to end the darkness plaguing London's streets, Ciel begins decaying from the darkness he himself now harbours, while Sebastian remains, forever, his devoted and deadly servant.

The strengths of the context leap right out at you from the very beginning. This is mostly due to the fantastic effort behind the English dub, neglegted by most other animes I've come across. Each characters accent is representative of their social standing, playing well themeatically with the trap the 1800 social system actually becomes in that Ciel is caught in stasis as an employer and a nobleman as well as a tortured soul to the extent he has little hope of freedom to live his own life. Clashes of culture appearing throughout, such as immigration tensions with caniving Italian businessmen and the growing mafia presence, civility and hedonism between the fiercley dutiful Sebastian and the boarderless and deliriously entertaining Grell contribute such passion in delivering tension you can't help but be sucked in.

Expanding on how well the English dub was constructed, it's also endearing how much the love for English Literature the creators and writers share and how seamlessly they weave in their characterisations that range between the demeaur and uppity Ceil and the farcically loveable house staff, in particular the short sighted and obnoxiously clumsy May Rin. The interactions between the characters is not only enjoyable, but is informed by components of Elizabethan plays, such as Dr Faustus, more than likely the insperation for this story of status and boundaries, ever more present in the supernatural elements such as the demons, angels and grim reapers. Also, easy parrallels can be made into the work of one of my favourite fantasy novelists Neil Gaiman in the precise yet somehow almost satirical construction of a business like and official economy of good and evil and the behaviour of their emissaries. The time and affectionate treatment spent on each of these elements sets Black Butler apart from Death Note, which at times could get monotonus adding to how stale it felt by the end.

While Black Butler flourishes in tone where Death Note fell short, it unfortunatley suffers from doing not enough of what Death Note did too much : exposition. The reveals characters make, principally the revelation of Sebastians true nature, is so poorly timed it's as if the audience knew them already. Not giving weight to such developments is almost a big no-no in the fantasy genre, as it places the convenience of the story over the layers of wonder and interest in the world it's trying to create. While Black Butler's characters are entertaining in their own characteurish way, there are times when we are so quickly demanded to care about them through rushed development, the balance they try to strike to keep the tone even (not too dark, not too silly) is off putting, particularly seen in the fate of my initial favourite characateur Madame Red, who, after having her back story thrown in my face like a wet rag, I was completley indifferent to. Even this failing,though, is not so affecting to reach Death Note levels of inconvenience, as the story elements remain strong enough to bare the brunt of overly modest reveals that don't tend to alienate or draw you out of proceedings.

All things considered, while it may not be as traditionally 'good' as Death Note, being neither as careful or thought provoking, the warmth of emotion behind Black Butler sets it above Death Note in terms of overall entertainment value. Truely, it's a joyful thing to behold.