Want to know what I’m on about? Ok, first, watch this for me:
Now, read this article, then this one, then this one. It won’t take long, I promise.
Done? Excellent. Now... WHAT THE HELL?
Now, you all know I’m a huge Tomb Raider fan, so my first reaction is to step in going ‘TOMB RAIDER IS IN NO WAY MAKING LARA WEAK AND IT ISN’T “RAPEY”, STOP BEING STUPID’, but I’ll suppress it in order to do me some objective journalism.
Shut up, objective journalism is too a thing round these parts.
Now, first thing’s first, go back and check the scene in question in the trailer, it’s around the 2:10 mark. What do you notice? Yeah, Lara’s bound up and some guy is attempting to do something unspeakable to her. It’s pretty horrible. However, notice how Lara fights and gets away? It’s vicious and awful, but this is kind of the point of the game, as has been stated by the very beginning. She’s trapped in a frightening, inhospitable environment, fighting for her life. The inclusion of amorous bad guys is kind of sleazy and definitely lazy, but not out of place.
However, the feminists and fans say otherwise. All I’m seeing are comments along the lines of ‘YOU MADE LARA WEAK, YOU SUCK!’ and ‘YOUR WRITING SUCKS FOR WOMEN, YOU CAN’T MAKE ANYONE CARE ABOUT THEM UNLESS YOU’RE HURTING OR RAPING THEM.’
Whoa, let’s back up now. I’ll deal with the first comment in a minute, but the second one? Right, let’s deconstruct this. I’ll agree that the writing for women in video games sucks harder than a Dyson, and that the inclusion of this scene is a little bit tasteless. However, let’s distance ourselves a bit. If you play any character in an action adventure game, your main objective is to get them safely to their goals. They face horrendous dangers in their path, but with your help they’ll get there in one piece.
The people involved in Tomb Raider need you to care about Lara. She has an unfortunate history as a sex object, and they need to get away from that. They’ve placed her in an environment that is out to get her, an inexperienced girl, at every turn. Yes, she will get hurt. Yes, she will come across unsavoury things, and yes, she will be changed by them. She appears weak because she’s never faced this kind of thing before.
But actually, is she weak? Let’s look at the evidence in the trailer. She falls on a spike and rips it out of her ribs with her bare hands. She shoots down a deer in order to feed herself, despite her obvious lack of experience. SHE STABS A WOLF IN THE FACE.
I put it to you that Lara isn’t weak at all. She’s inexperienced, injured and out of her depth, but rather than give up and die as many would, she fights back. If she were a male character, no one would think anything of this. Being female though, she gets flack from internet feminists seeing her existence as a threat. Guys, I’m saying this as a ‘feminist’ myself (we need a better name, badly): SHE’S NOT A THREAT.
My feeling is that this game will set up a line of sequels that will draw on Lara’s experiences in this story and build her up to be the ‘badass’ that fans feel she should be in the first place. After all, you can’t throw someone into their origin story already stomping bad guys without a second thought. Its bad story telling. Just, hang on and chill out, alright internet? Please?
Quick edit: This post is going up in an hour (I wrote it last night), but I've just discovered an article that puts my points across better than I could. You can find it here. Happy reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment