Kingdom Hearts I
I bought Kingdom Hearts a couple of months ago, simply because it was Final Fantasy and Disney all rolled into one. It couldn’t be anymore perfect.
It sucks.
I’m not sure how Squaresoft managed to achieve this level of game design, because the whole place looks so cheap and thrown together after a couple of hours in Maya or something and then they decided to pass it off as a level. Everything is Square, Block, Square, more Blocks and Big Ass Blocks. The spacecraft shooting levels seem to be just another way to waste more of your time, and the spacecraft itself looks like something out of a game you would’ve played in 1995.
The controls are shoddily designed, where instead of using the right analog stick to rotate the camera around, you use the L2 and R2 buttons instead. There’s no option to look up or down, unless you want to move into first person camera (which is still a piece of shit; you can’t move around in first person). The camera itself never fucking points where you want it to. Everytime you get thrown into an obligatory platform puzzle, you can be sure that you’ll fall a minimum of 6 times before you finally make it all the way to Point B. You have to manually rotate the camera around whenever Sora jumps from one place to another, and God forbid if you don’t rotate the camera in time, or you’ll see Sora land straight to the ground and you’ll start pulling out your hair in frustration. Sometimes the platforms you’re supposed to land on are so ridiculously small you’ll instantly lose your balance when Goofy or Donald decide to become clever and think that there’s enough room for all three of you on that tiny motherfucking mushroom.
The music is incredibly annoying. The background music that plays whenever you enter a world simply blasts into your ears on repeat. The loop was so short that I could traverse one single area (not level, AREA) and hear it on replay at least 3 times. You’ll hear the same melody over and over again anytime you enter any world, and it’ll drive you insane. I wouldn’t have minded if the music was softer, or to give some sort of ambiance, but the music seems to want to be a very annoying third character in the game, and the melodies sound exactly alike, only differing in the instrumentation.
Another thing, really, is the lack of a objective marker. I put down Kingdom Hearts a few weeks ago to take up FFXII, and I had completely forgotten what I was supposed to do when I picked it back up again. I had to fight wave after wave of bad guys before realizing I was supposed to be delivering a package to some shitface in the cellar. And you know what? I reminded myself. The game gave no inkling of what I was supposed to do, and I had to remember it. Another occasion had me platforming the blocky rooftops of Agrabah with no destination in mind, except that I knew I had to get to the Sultan’s Palace. I had probably traversed the whole of Agrabah about 7 goddamn times with no idea how to reach the palace before going ‘fuck this shit’ and quitting the game.
Not to mention that everyone is rendered the same, except for the three main human characters, Sora, Riku and whatsherface. If you’ve watched Disney animation as much as I have, you’ll notice the style of drawing differs from movie to movie. Mulan has the more ‘chinese-brushstroke’ kind of art, where everything is sharp and in smooth strokes, while Aladdin has more rounded edges, giving a more comical effect. In Kingdom Hearts, everyone looks the same. Put Jane in Jasmine’s clothing, dye her hair black and you’ll get Jasmine. I don’t think this is a major gripe, since I understand that they are all rendered by the same 1995 graphics engine that Squaresoft pulled out of their closet to develop, and honestly, if they did look different, I’d probably still be complaining anyway.
I suppose the bigger plotline is pretty much motivation enough for me to slave through the game (plus, I haven’t met Belle yet), but the individual worlds that you visit just feels like the game is obligingly giving you as many Disney characters as it can. Also, the game contradicts canon wherever it goes, and it makes the Disney fan in me a little disappointed.
The combat system also sucks a great big load of crap. I suppose this game was the predecessor to FFXII’s combat system, and you can see it’s not as finely tuned. Firstly, you can’t enter the menu whenever you’re in battle, so when you realize Goofy’s out of potions, you can’t go back to the menu to restock. You wind up sitting there getting killed by the big boss because you have 50 potions in stock but the game won’t let you use it.
Secondly, combat is fast. I honestly don’t know why magic is a necessity in this game, because you have to move your cursor to the menu, click on whatever magic you want to cast, and then cast it at your target, all the while having enemies raining crap on your ass. Before you know it, you’ve lost half your health just searching for the damn Gravity spell. Sure, there are shortcuts, but what the hell, three shortcuts? What if the boss is immune to elemental damage or something, and all I have are elemental magics in the shortcuts? I can’t go to the menu BECAUSE THE GAME WON’T LET ME, and I wind up having to refer to GameFAQs to prepare myself.
Thirdly, whenever there are enormous waves of bad guys for me to maim, I’m never able to see what I’m hitting. My screen is blocked with silhouettes of Heartless, and especially so when those big fat round guys show up. Most of the time I just hit the lock-on button and mash X blindly. This really all calls back to the camera issues, because I can’t really have a bird’s eye view of what I’m fighting against, since the camera just likes to stay at Sora’s height, who probably is about a meter tall.
I suppose Kingdom Hearts II might make up for it; hopefully by then they’d have worked out what worked and what didn’t. Of course, that’s assuming I’d even get through KH1 in the first place.
POTC – AWE DVD RPG BRB LOL
So I managed to grab a full DVD copy of Pirates of the Caribbean – At World’s End (which may or may not be downloaded), and needless to say, I was horrendously disappointed with the amount of special features in the 2 disc set. I’m not sure why the DVD release took so incredibly long (seeing as Ratatouille and Ocean’s 13 were released in theaters later and yet the DVDs were released earlier), so I thought it must be chock full of special features; they needed to get the stars to do commentary ala Curse of the Black Pearl, etc. I even preordered a copy, because I thought there would be a ton of extra stuff.
I’m glad that I canceled my order, because the amount of extra features are pitiful. There’s even no Jerry Bruckheimer ‘I’m a photographer, let me show you my pretty pictures with commentary’ feature. There are about… 6-7 features on the second disc, each less than 15 minutes long. The features themselves are pretty boring, and you hardly see any of the stars talk at all. Keira probably had 30 seconds of interview time, Bill Nighy 10 seconds, and you don’t see Jack Davenport at all (in which I was very disappointed. He was such a huge laugh during interviews in Dead Man’s Chest).
I thought the deleted scenes would make up for it, and I thought they’ll throw in the bit where Davy Jones and Calypso had the prolonged conversation in the brig, since it was a very big thing on the Intarwebz. I remember some people also saying that there were many scenes involving Norrington that were cut out, so I was looking forward to that too.
There is a grand total of two deleted scenes. One has Jack and Barbossa fighting over the helm, and the other has Pintel and Ragetti talking about riddles. Oh wait, there’s also commentary by Gore Verbinski, if that’s any consolation.
From what I heard, the DVD booklet apparently has a Pirates FAQ of sorts, and this is what it says:
Since Will honored his destiny on the Flying Dutchman, in 10 years does he get to return to land for good, thereby freeing his father and crew?
Every 10 years, Will may step on land for one day. He is bound to the Flying Dutchman forever.
I pretty much foamed at the mouth at this. HE CAN’T BE. I WANT A MOTHERFUCKING HAPPY ENDING, DAMMIT. Not to mention that the guys actually deleted that goddamn scene where Calypso and Davy Jones talk about the curse being broken after 10 years, and everyone who’s even remotely connected to the Pirates fandom KNOW IT. I thought it was such a nice contrast between the relationship of Calypso/Davy Jones and Will/Elizabeth, and there you go Disney, crushing my hopes and dreams. :’(
The film itself is still awesome. The final battle was so full of pumped up adrenaline, even on my 15 inch computer screen whoops, my mistake, my 14 inch TV. I still think Davy Jones has the attention span of a hamster, despite all my love for the poor guy. He threatens to kill Jack, Will, Liz and Bootstrap, but he doesn’t succeed in any of them (except Will), which makes me rather annoyed at the whole ‘you can’t kill off main characters, but you can give the illusion that you are!’ He takes no notice of his severed tentacle, the chest with his heart disappears whenever his attention moves to someone else, and apparently his tingly senses whenever his heart is nearby can be flickered like an on/off switch. I am still sorely disappointed that we don’t see human!Davy in all his costume-y glory, with half of the brig in darkness and the other half has him in dull candlelight.
I also really wished there was some conclusion to the whole Calypso/Davy Jones ending, without having to run to Ted and Terry asking ‘WTF HAPPENED’. But then again, I might be asking too much, seeing as the curse of the Flying Dutchman was never fully explained and we don’t even know how Elizabeth and Will’s lives will end. Does she stab the heart when she’s 80 and frail, and a youthful Will dying next to her in bed? And seriously, her kid is not going to run to Daddy with open arms, not with him disappearing for 10 years and returning for one day. Most of that day would be spent with having hawt sex with Elizabeth anyway.
Y’know, it would have been a better explanation that after 10 years, the curse is broken, and Will and Liz live happily ever after. It doesn’t fit into the film (CURSE YOU GUYS FOR DELETING THAT SCENE) but it explains it a hell of a lot better. Plus, you get the typical Hollywood ending, which every Hollywood film is supposed to have by law. Pirates, I love you, so give me a happy ending, dammit!
I still love the music, and it makes me even sadder that only a few of the tracks I like are on the OST. There was a musical bit where Will dies and Jack and Liz escape by parachute, and that melody was beautiful. IT’S NOWHERE TO BE FOUND. Do I really have to replay that scene with a bunch of sound effects in the background to listen to the awesomeness that is Hans Zimmer? No, I will not buy your 4-in-1 Collector’s Edition POTC OST thing just to listen to 8 extra tracks of music that weren’t in the original OSTs (it’s on my wishlist though).
Listening to the orchestrations in the film and the OST, I’ve come to the conclusion that the film music sounds better than it does on the soundtrack, which is another sad thing to note. There are more brass and violins, and less of the synthetic stuff, and the film score sounds more ‘well-rounded’ than the OST.
I love Pirates of the Caribbean. Even when the scriptwriters didn’t seem to be doing their job, the world that Gore Verbinski gave us made up for it (it’s like Harry Potter, in a way). It’s just annoying to see that the special features are minuscule, and they just don’t seem to know how to market the product. They did a stellar job in Curse of the Black Pearl, and I’m not sure how that got lost down the line.
Anyway, if you want to buy AWE, get the single disc edition and save yourself 10 bucks. Unless Disney comes out with a ‘Director’s Cut’ or something, I don’t think the DVD is worth it.
FPS Games
I don’t like First Person Shooters. There, I said it. I’m sure I’ve pretty much alienated 3/4 of the American gaming industry with those words, but I just don’t like them.
I remember playing my FPS game, which was Thief: The Dark Project. My first question was “why the hell am I holding my blackjack so close to my field of vision?” If you actually noticed when you hold anything, it’s never up to your line of sight. It’s down below, part of your peripheral vision and blurred. If you actually held things consistently to your line of sight, your biceps will hurt like there’s no tomorrow. This effect was always jarring to me, and even more so when I wound up venturing beyond my Thief trilogy and fingered my way into the Darkness demo.
Firstly, the field of vision where your guns were placed were annoying, as usual. Secondly, the guns are held like they’re being pointed at each other. I’m sure it’s supposed to facilitate the illusion that you’re pointing two guns at a single enemy (hence, the cross-eyed type effect) but all I saw was your wrists in a rather painful position. Thirdly, why the hell are those weird black things up in the corner? If they truly emerged from my shoulders/spine, they’d be either above my head or beside it, not jamming itself in front of my eyes and blocking up the screen. I think game industries have attempted to remove the clutter by removing the inventory screen and health bar, but all they’re doing is still mucking stuff up by adding BIG SPESHUL THINGS to oogle at for the next 10 hours while you play the game.
A few other dumb reasons shall be listed here under what can only be described as ‘human realism’. I can’t see my feet, I don’t walk naturally (either my gun hand moves, giving some semblance of weight shifting, or I just drift through straight on), and for some reason, I always feel shorter than everyone else. Everytime I look at the floor it seems to be just 10 centimeters away from me, and especially so when I’m walking up a hill. My jumps are crap, partially because I can’t see my fucking feet, and the character jumps like a wuss anyway. It feels kinda odd to see your character constantly get gun upgrades and is able to shoot bosses 10 times his size, but he still can’t get himself over a rooftop.
Despite all these things that subvert the effect of realism, I feel unnaturally attached to the character whenever I play any FPS game. I feel like I am the character, right in the middle of the setting, wherever it is. This, unfortunately, plays up the tendency for me to conserve my ammo whenever possible. It’s a habit I’ve consistently had. Open up any FF saved game of mine and you’ll see my inventory maxed out, and I never use them. Same goes for Tomb Raider. All the nifty guns are saved for the ‘rainy day’ that never comes.
I remember stepping into Halo 2 for a while, and whenever I shot someone, it would always be in single, individual shots. My friends were always yelling at me to keep shooting.
Them: Why the hell are you always shooting in short spurts?
Me: I want to conserve my ammo!
Them: Enemies drop guns! You can take them!
Me: I know, but what if they drop those stupid guns like that plasma pistol or whatever? I’ll be out of ammo and armed with a lousy gun!
Them: -___-”
So I wound up shooting everything in sight, as per their instructions. Predictably, I ran out of ammo and died. Yeah, thanks.
X2’s slut factor
This comment pretty much encompasses the reasons why FFX-2 has been perceived as a ’slutty game’. Yuna wears shorts so short that they reveal part of her rear, Rikku’s in constant bikini form, and Paine’s probably the most decent looking of the bunch. The credits sequence in the beginning of the game also juxtaposes the girls’ breasts with their respective preferred weapons.
There are also some pretty disturbing sequences, like the whole ‘Jack Leblanc’s satisfaction up!’ through massaging, and she gives some very, very disturbing noises. I was Not A Fan of the wording (‘Jack her up?’ Christ, the sexual overtones can’t get any more obvious than that). Not to mention that Yuna teases Brother that he has to pay to see her dance, which pretty much screams ‘I WANT TO BE A LAP DANCER’.
(For the record, I’ve seen even more disturbing sequences than this. God of War II had such a hilariously bad scene and I was just dragging my jaw around for the rest of the day).
But the sexual overtones end there. Yuna, Rikku or Paine do not actually sell themselves out in any way. Sure, one can say the revealing dresses panders to the ‘my penis likes to talk’ demographic, but what about the story? In FFX, I lumped Yuna together with the ‘helpless girls who get kidnapped and need to be saved because they are special’ heroines (see: Garnet, Rinoa and Aeris) and couldn’t tell from the four of them. X-2 gave her a character makeover, and I’m glad for the fact that she actually gets angry and frustrated at people who aren’t villains. Paine, as indicative of any ‘badass’ stereotype, projects nothing that can be seen as sexual. Rikku’s probably the more passive of the three, and her reaction towards Gippal’s joke that they used to be together made me roll my eyes and mute the TV.
There was some debate that asked if revealing dresses subverted the characterization of females in games. You have Lara, who scales the skyscrapers of Tokyo barefoot and in a skimpy black dress. You have Ivy, who clearly needs a good ol’ bra. You have Mai Shiranui, whose bouncing bosom has been a subject of debate even within SNK itself. All these girls are strong – fighter strong, even, but has the sexualization of these women actually subverted their strength?
I think this is a very different issue than the whole Jade Raymond incident. The problem here is that the women are already sexualized, and there has never been some sort of survey done that actually measured what people felt. Jade, in contrast, was a woman working in a professional capacity, and became a sexual object. Perhaps this goes to show that gaming culture truly does affect our perceptions. There are psychological studies to show that violence in gaming is correlated to the amount of violence exhibited in real life (Anderson & Dill, 2000), despite gamers’ protests. Perhaps this correlation of violence can also be carried over into perceptions of women, and since violence is essentially a physical activity, it can be possible that the ‘nonphysical’ can be manifested more readily. Since physical aggression harms people, and everyone knows it, stereotyping and discrimination becomes a more acceptable form of aggressive behaviour.
It’ll be a very interesting study to partake: gauging the type of attitudes men have about women, and the correlation between video games that presumably sexualize females.
Back to FFX-2. No, I don’t think the game actually made them whores. Character development on any of the three girls don’t show that, and while the style of dress is objectionable, it’s not extremist. The other dresspheres looked pretty decent and appropriate – the dark knight and warrior dresspheres are but two examples, and hey! NO CLEAVAGE. I suppose in that sense, it pretty much caters to both the male and female demographics – the males can jack themselves off looking at the outfits that are revealing, and the girls can squeal at the massive amount of clothing they can change into.
Anyway, it’s not how sexual the game was that killed it. It was the motherfucking minigames.
My misogyny has nothing to do with me; it’s your fault I’m showing it!
Having followed Assassin’s Creed for a while before it was released, I already caught a glimpse of the sexism that pervades the male-dominated gaming community. Jade Raymond is the producer of Assassin’s Creed, and she had given interviews promoting the game. Any preview video of Assassin’s Creed with Jade in it has always been met with comments of ‘OMG she is sooo hawt’ and ‘I wanna fuck her’. I had originally brushed it aside as another case of the ‘my penis iz talking, let me show you it’ syndrome, but then it got so out of control I can’t help but express rage at this point.
Recently there were rumors she was about to appear in Maxim magazine (which she flatly denied) and SomethingAwful.com linked a comic of her giving blowjobs to men to persuade them to buy Assassin’s Creed. The webmaster of Something Awful was given a C&D from Ubisoft. Comments of ’she’s a touchy bitch’ and blame the victim are abound.
Being steeped into this event, I’d like to offer a few observations on the general arguments made by (misogynist) men who think it isn’t that big a deal.
The most common argument made was Ubisoft was using Jade to sell their game, hence, ’sex sells’. No one has seen a producer get this much coverage, compared to other producers of other games. It’s Ubisoft’s fault to send a woman to promote a game publicly, and the comic (and comments) were just backlash ‘in response’. Dave, the very man who created said offensive comic, gives his extensive tl;dr thoughts of this argument, and so does Crawford, and Ken. It’s also interesting to note that the amount of misogynist comments made on any news post about Jade have been brushed aside by the arguers, and heap blame on Ubisoft. It’s not new to find people looking only for evidence to confirm their own biases and dismiss disconfirming evidence, but when something as obvious as sexist comments are ignored in favour of a company conspiracy, I can’t help but wonder if everyone’s missing the forest for the trees.
In short: The blame lies wholly on Ubisoft for exposing a woman to the public to sell their game. Because she’s hot and popular, the misogynist comments are therefore justified.
This argument is fundamentally wrong on two accounts:
1. It was the press coverage (i.e: Kotaku) that focused on how pretty Jade was than the game; not Ubisoft. Anything that was possibly sanctioned by Ubisoft never portrayed Jade in a sexual light. The few photos of her show her in a completely professional capacity. The Developer Diaries that promoted Assassin’s Creed never portrayed her in such a way. It was the press response that molded a spokesperson into a sex symbol. It was not Ubisoft’s fault; it’s the misogyny that pervades the journalistic (gaming) culture, and the subsequent comments that spawned from these newsposts.
2. Explicit misogyny is never justified. No more needs to be said.
With that out of the way, more inferences can be had about this argument. Firstly, this operates on the basic assumption that pretty women are forced to be exposed publicly, with or without their consent. The feedback the pretty woman receives is therefore justified, because ogling at beautiful women seems to be a norm for men. This then leads to the conclusion that since one does not like the feedback men find okay to dish out, one must stop being exposed to the public. This is where the blame for Ubisoft may come in – by stopping exposure, you stop the feedback.
The problem with this logic is that it begs back to the gender-role stereotype that women are not to be seen, especially beautiful women. The belief that it’s okay to say ‘God damn, I’d rape her in a second’ has become so internalized that misogynist men find there’s nothing wrong with their psychological make-up, instead, one has to blame other sources for implanting misogynist thoughts.
The second argument was that there was nothing offensive about the comic; in fact, it’s a political and well-thought out message about the sexual perversion that UBISOFT WHORED HER OUT TO OMG. Also, ‘people need to learn how to take a joke’ can also fall into this category of ‘not getting it’. Dave, as mentioned, loves his tl;dr, and Brad, in his infinite wisdom, doesn’t mind being called stupid, and neither does he mind photoshopped pictures of himself giving blowjobs to other men (but then refused to give his picture).
I doubt I can find anything of value to actually counter this argument, simply because it seems their our values greatly differ. It doesn’t take a Psychology major to know that personal values cannot be changed (unless you’re shown to have explicitly experienced some form of cognitive dissonance, which is not the case for the arguments made here; all of them think objectifying women is okay).
From a personal standpoint, I found nothing satirical about a comic that portrayed a professional woman in a demeaning way. There was nothing ironical nor mocking; it was explicitly sexist, which Dave readily admits to (and how it falls under his belief it is still ’satire’ is something beyond my grasp). I found nothing laughable about a comic whose only message was a sexist view of women.
The final most observed argument was ‘it’s the internet, stop getting your knickers in a twist and focus on something more productive’.
Apparently, the word cyber rape has been either ignored or not learned. Sexually demeaning photos is a form of cyber rape. If a woman didn’t ask for it, then don’t give it. The fact that it’s virtual is not any less important than the physical assault itself. Sadly, ‘violence’ has become a metaphor for ‘rape’ over these years (see the statistics on the amount of judicial punishment meted out to rapists who inflicted bodily harm to their victims against those who did not), and it is assumed that if there is no physical harm done to the female, it’s relatively acceptable. It is not. Whether it be severe psychological trauma or just minor annoyance, the fact remains that harm was done.
It’s not shocking to see the same old arguments made by both misogynists and feminists alike. I can’t say that I’m well versed in the area of misogyny myself, but all I am able to observe so far are extreme examples of it, with no ‘moderate ground’. This is also perhaps based on my feminist nature, since I have observed varying degrees of feminism (the oft-proclaimed question of ’should a man hold open the door for a woman?’ is often met with a variety of responses from feminists) and none yet from misogynists. Perhaps it is because all their arguments can be countered, and every single comment is inherently sexist in nature.
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ETA: Before I forget, my entire point was this: the attempt to justify the objectification of women (in this case, Jade) is misogynist. The arguments that I’ve seen from these very people seem to have ignored this very issue, instead focusing more on who is to blame for this fallout (not the misogynists). It seems that they indirectly admit the fallout is sexist in nature, but have attempted to justify their misogyny by shifting the blame to someone else, hence the title of this post.
ETA 2: I’ve seen a greater and greater amount of posts that have completely sidestepped the issue of misogyny and has now focused on the ‘freedom of speech’, or ‘the First Amendment’, and that any form of censorship is oppression. Any person who has actually read the First Amendment would know that the amendment is not an umbrella that protects every single piece of bullshit that is spouted (see also: libel, defamation, obscenity). The fact remains that the response (which encompasses fanboy reactions, the comic, and the photoshopped photos) was sexist in nature, and is possibly defamatory. I will not speculate on whether Ubisoft actually has grounds to win should they choose to sue (given that I’m no lawyer, but hey, it still doesn’t stop wannabe-lawyers from espousing misconceptions of the First Amendment and then predicting the result of the lawsuit based on that).
More gloriously related posts:
Character Assassin’s Creed… More Misogyny in Gaming. (Roy is full of awesome, by the way. He put things into words more eloquently than I ever could).
The Trouble with Jade @ Feministe.
Jade Raymond is for Real @ GameGirlAdvance
Shrub.com.
Clearly, We Do Not Deserve Nice Things And/Or People.
A Brief Word About the Whole Jade Raymond Situation.
Sexism – An Observation on Elizabeth Swann
Edited and purged, formerly “Sexism and Asian cinema”: Because Elizabeth needs some love all her own.
You know how you just get that irritating feeling when people say ‘that’s sexist!’ whenever the opportunity shows itself? Yeah, try and swallow that when you’re around me. After this stereotype and prejudice course, I’m seeing shit in a whole new light, and everything is sexist, or racist, and can be justified.
I find it extremely hypocritical for these very same Sue authors to tout an unrealistic representation of themselves when Elizabeth is a (relatively) realistic representation of nearly all of these things that they want to be. She fends for herself, holds power, and doesn’t fall for every man that comes her way, but at the same time she could not defeat the main antagonist, Davy Jones. She couldn’t save her father from death, or Will, even.
Fanfiction aside, I observed (at least in the communities I frequent), people refer to the personage as Keira, not Elizabeth. It’s ‘Keira’s annoying’, ‘I didn’t like Keira in the movie’, and it baffles me why they don’t refer to her as Elizabeth. If they want to hate the character, shouldn’t they refer to the character’s name, and not the person who portrays her?
There were numerous comments of ‘I liked her when she wore pretty dresses/fainted’, ’she had too much screen time’, and ‘I’m all for girl power, but she was annoying’. I got really bothered by the second reason; are males really necessary to become the main protagonist on default? I also never got a real definition to ‘annoying’ when I probed for answers, and my guess is that they don’t know (at least consciously). My inference was that they didn’t like the stronger character of Elizabeth, and ‘annoying’ was just the most suitable way to express dislike without sounding prejudiced (I suppose the most popular word to describe Elizabeth in the fanfiction world would be a Sue).
When I attempted to probe further into the reasons why they wanted Elizabeth to not be the Pirate King, they began to get offended (who wouldn’t, and in my defense, I would like to believe I wrote as neutral a tone as I am now) and began to state over and over along the lines of ‘I’m not sexist, I LOVE KEIRA, I never said I didn’t like her, and I’m not going to discuss this further.’
Sadly enough – from my observation at least – comments of this nature were usually made by females. It’s really sad to see females actually conform to the stereotype of gender inequality, where females are supposed to wear pretty dresses and get rescued by men, and must always play the supporting role to a male protagonist.
The males, in contrast, don’t disguise their prejudice. I’ve seen comments ranging from ‘I hate Keira’s jaw’ to this little gem:
if you’re gonna have a girl that’s a badass in your movie, the only way for it to be believable is for her to be butt-ugly. a pretty girl just throws all believabiliy out the window. anyone seen “Monster” with Charlize Theron. she killed lots of people and it was freakin terrifying. why? because it was hard to even look at her.
Let’s take this apart, shall we?
1. The only way for a girl to quash stereotypes (specifically, not being the damsel in distress) is to be ‘butt-ugly’. If you’re beautiful, you’re just there to be goggled at. Your purpose is to be goggled at. Apparently beautiful girls cannot be strong – it’s not ‘believable’ – which makes me wonder how many women he actually knows.
2. The fact that the character of Charlize Theron murdered people was not because of the act itself, but rather it was how ugly she looked. I’m pretty sure the movie wasn’t exactly trying to portray her as the next Medusa… literally.
There are others which are perhaps more explicit and implicit compared with this comment, but I shan’t make you roll your eyes and tell me that ‘ZOMG SEXISM EXISTS DIDNT U KNO’.
What I am shocked to see, however, is how bad the objectification of women has become in cinema, and how much of these stereotypes have been internalized. Even when a female character is ‘badass’, she still needs to bare skin and have a desirable personality (Tomb Raider, Charlie’s Angels), while simultaneously getting defeated by a man or being ‘broken’ by a man (falling in love and thus not being able to be badass anymore). The character of Elizabeth isn’t like that at all. She traveled all the way by herself to find Will, made decisions herself, becomes a captain of a ship, becomes the Pirate King, and actually took on the roles that a man is stereotyped to hold. That doesn’t sit well with people (females included, sadly enough). I find it absolutely sad that Elizabeth’s character has been so negatively received, simply because she has rejected all the stereotypes of what women are supposed to be without having to become a sexual object.
I think we’ve become a society so afraid to offend others that subjects like these become taboo. I myself have stepped away from the constant Elizabeth-bashing because of all the high emotions that run from the other party (I just like to analyze other people’s words, regardless of my personal bias.) Out of all my sourcing, I have yet to see a legitimate, unprejudiced reason as to why Elizabeth (the character, not Keira) has been so widely disliked by everyone. Goes to show how much stereotyping and prejudice runs deep in the societies we live in.
