I have access at home to three consoles, none of which I can operate–the plain truth is that I’m not a gamer and might never be. I do care, however, for how videogames are evolving. Nobody should ignore them if only because for more than a decade they have been generating much bigger business than films. Besides, they are a favourite entertainment among those born from the 1970s onward (but note: around 10% of all gamers are past 50 years of age). There are already two generations of gamers, mainly male but also increasingly female (excuse the gender binarism).
Genderwise, though, the videogame industry is particularly problematic. The news and the social media offer abundant complaints from the women in the field, mostly gamers but also developers and executives. They are routinely subjected to aggressive male chauvinism, a situation specially worrying because it is caused by patriarchal younger men. Women are not told to stay away from books, plays, comics, music, films or series appealing to men. In the gamers’ world, in contrast, misogynistic attitudes are common and result, in the worst cases, in women’s eviction from some particularly masculinist territories.
Why this sexist territorialism? The most recalcitrant men have found shelter in videogames after abandoning other domains of entertainment/culture convinced that they were being feminized: reading, above all, but also any activity that may seem passive, such as seeing films in cinemas or watching TV at home. For the patriarchal men videogames appear to solve two interrelated problems: how to approach entertainment in a more active way and how to keep the alleged threat of feminization away. The moment the more active girls have demanded admission into the all-male territory, the trolls have reacted as what they are. The truth, however, is that videogames are not as active as these patriarchal gamers assume, but rather passive. From a feminist point of view it also must be noted that their opening up towards a more egalitarian stance in some of their most advanced plotlines is not substantially altering their patriarchal narratives. Since I don’t play, how do I know? Easy: I have learned from my students.
Last year an ex-student returned to UAB after an absence of twenty years to finish his degree. In the meantime, Josué Monchán had become a well-known videogame professional as writer, translator and popularizer. It seemed, then, logical for him to focus his TFG on this field, though not so logical that I became his tutor. This was a case of nobody else wanting to take the challenge and of my accepting on the grounds that Games Studies is a branch of Cultural Studies, my area. Josué focused his TFG/BA dissertation on a very popular videogame, The Walking Dead (Telltale Games) inspired by the TV series (now in its eighth season), adapted in its turn from a graphic novel. Having seen a few seasons of the series, I felt confident that I would understand the gist of his research. He explored player’s agency and, to summarize his very sophisticated dissertation, Josué argued that even in the most accomplished games it is impossible to offer as much agency as the player demands. The multiple choices which open up at each plot turn need to be limited, or else force the studio to make a ruinous investment. Enjoy the TFG: https://ddd.uab.cat/record/181036.
In hindsight, I realize that we were after all approaching gaming from a Gender Studies angle, as, basically, Josué explained that videogames attract gamers by lying about the degree of agency they will enjoy. Gamers are ultimately far more passive than the jumping on the sofa fuelled by all that adrenaline suggests. In any case, Josué didn’t look in detail into the gender dynamics of The Walking Dead, a horror survival videogame which narrates how, in the context of a zombie apocalypse, university professor and convicted criminal Lee Everett rescues and afterwards protects young Clementine.
One year later, I find myself tutoring another undergrad student with a great enthusiasm for videogames. Andrea’s TFG deals with The Last of Us–a horror survival game that narrates how smuggler Joel accepts protecting young Ellie in the context of a zombie apocalypse. Talk about déjà vu! A few months ago, I knew nothing about The Last of Us (2013, Naughty Dog), an extremely popular quality videogame, honoured with many major awards and already a contemporary classic. Now I can boast that I have even lectured about it! When Josué invited me offer an introduction to Masculinities Studies to his class in the BA ‘Creación y narración de videojuegos’ (Universidad Francisco Victoria), I cheekily asked to discuss The Last of Us. It was great to share my impressions for once with a male majority in class (12 young men, 3 women).
Andrea is analyzing the gender issues in The Last of Us, specifically the allegedly progressive characterization of the female lead, Ellie. The plot (for this is a narrative or adventure videogame) takes one year to unfold; in three of the seasons the gamer plays through Joel, but in one the game is focalized through Ellie. Technically, both are the main lead. I found everything I read about The Last of Us (including some academic work) very interesting. It never occurred to me last year that I should have watched a walkthrough (a video of the game as actually played) to understand gameplay in The Walking Dead. This time, curioser and curioser, I selected a condensed walkthrough on YouTube and spent… 6 hours watching it. The full game, incidentally, takes a maximum of 15/17 hours to play, depending on the gamer’s skills.
Actually, I first watched one hour of a 10-hour walkthrough (this is average, it seems) to get the basics of the gameplay. The 6-hour version was more dynamic but also far more complete than the 90’/120’ plot-driven versions also available. These reduce The Last of Us to its bare bones acting as the equivalent of a possible film adaptation. Let me explain that I chose to spend the 6 hours watching The Last of Us after reaching the conclusion that this is not longer than reading each of the novels my other tutorees are working on (see my previous post). I simply loved the experience!: at one point I even stayed glued to my tablet for 3 hours. Also, please believe me, I was deeply moved by the initial segment and devastated by the end section, like many other YouTube spectators as I saw from their comments.
I understand Andrea’s interest in Ellie, though I have already warned her that women’s characterization in male-dominated media is always limited. I must note that script writer (and co-director) Neil Druckmann tries hard to offer a variety of male characters. They include not only white Joel and his brother but also two loving African-American brothers and what I will call paradoxical examples of homosexuality… and of cannibalism. Druckmann also tries seriously not to stereotype women as sexy toys. The female characters are far less diverse but Ellie, and specially Joel’s partner Tess, offer a convincing example of tough, self-reliant femininity.
What I didn’t anticipate is that Joel’s characterization would shake the foundations of my own Gender Studies research. Here is your classic handsome, rugged, mature Texan, helping Ellie to cross a devastated American landscape, using all the violence he can muster against the zombie hordes. Or, rather, ‘infected’ since they’re living individuals plagued by a scary fungal parasite. Ellie needs protection because she is immune and might be the key to a vaccine, to be developed in a secret lab hundreds of miles away. Why is Joel appealing if all this seems so typically malestream? Because he is not sexist. Or is he?
Druckmann became a father in the course of writing The Last of Us and this explains the emphasis on Joel’s paternal (or paternalistic?) stance towards Ellie. This is complicated, nonetheless, because for her to become his focus of attention, Joel has to lose first his biological daughter, Sarah, in awful circumstances–this is how the game begins. This child is a ‘woman in the refrigerator’, as the trope of the female who dies so that the hero can begin his adventure was christened back in 1999, in relation to the death of Green Lantern’s girlfriend. Still grieving, Joel takes a long time to sort out his feelings for Ellie and trust her own survival abilities but he makes the required effort successfully. He, in short, learns to see Ellie as a complete human being. Add to this that Joel treats Tess as his total equal.
Faced at the end of the videogame with the problem of where his loyalty lies, with Ellie or with the US civilization he is being asked to save (split between a militaristic Government and anarchist guerrilla forces), Joel makes a controversial choice. I can only say that it astonished me because it is coherently heroic but also appallingly villainous. I take my hat off before Druckmann! However, and this is a major snag, Joel takes his decision alone, bypassing Ellie’s opinion and agency even though she is the subject of that choice. Here’s, then, the quandary: is Joel yet another patriarchal chauvinist, or a man with his heart in the right place?
What worries me about Joel, then, is that he seems to exemplify an insidious ongoing trend. Patriarchal storytelling, including videogames, may be evolving towards plots that, while not overtly sexist or misogynistic (even quite the opposite), are still patriarchal. This means man-centred and based on deploying an ultra-violent heroic narrative, in which men make if not all at least most choices. You need to wonder why the two major videogames that my tutorees have chosen (The Walking Dead, The Last of Us) share the same storyline. I speculated in my lecture that Joel, the paradoxically ultra-violent good guy, and his kind aim at claiming back for men the debased role of protector, which explains the zombie/infected scenario. The contradictory feeling they inspire, even in feminist women like yours truly, is that they would be perfect companions in situations of danger. They want to protect us, as the idealized knights did but without the sexism, never mind how oxymoronic this sounds. As one of the young men in class told me ‘this sounds far-fetched, but might well be the case’. What worries me is that this type of effective protector only appears in violent fictions and not in the violent situations of real life, in which justice is needed. If you take the monsters away, could Joel channel his profound protective instinct towards justice? What would happen to his capacity for violence? If Tess had been entrusted with protecting Ellie, would The Last of Us be the same or substantially different, taking into account she uses plenty of violence, too?
I asked Andrea how it felt to be a woman and ‘play’ Joel because much has been written about boys manipulating female characters in videogames but very little, if anything, about the opposite case. Challenging, she said. The right word.
I publish a new post every Tuesday (for updates follow @SaraMartinUAB). Comments are very welcome! Download the yearly volumes from: http://ddd.uab.cat/record/116328. My web: http://gent.uab.cat/saramartinalegre/