I think, after all these years, I understand what the Maleficent and every incarnation of "my brother/sister/king didn't invite me to their daughter's christening" there ever was. It must have been hard to see basically everyone go, including any assortment of peasants and farm animals, and yet you're the single person that they decided not to invite. This is where personally I'd depart from the comparison because I probably wouldn't throw any curse about spindle pricking a baby on her finger. If I had the ability to do such a thing, I'd throw a curse about spindle pricking the gigantic douchebag who didn't invite me to the party on his dick, but the basic principle of being annoyed at not being invited is the same.
Playing games sometimes throws me for a loop, because there are a lot of times where I'm going along, playing, collecting items, enjoying the well-written story, screaming at the boss fight, and then am faced with the sudden, abrupt realization that I'm not invited. I've been getting hints here and there, the other party goers have been side-eyeing me, whispering into their Solo cups as I walk by, and once or twice someone has said "what are you doing here?" and I've laughed at what I thought was their peculiar joke. But now it's hit me. I wasn't invited at all. No one wants me here.
It's disappointing, particularly, when it's a game I like (switching from the analogy here before I get lost in it). I really enjoyed Arkham Asylum, and hell, I love Paul Dini. I'm not into comic books in a real intense way, but without him and Bruce Timm, I never would have gotten Batman: The Animated Series, which is easily one of the best interpretations of Batman, and that includes the Nolanverse and its particularly odd brand of womanless whitewashing. I like Arkham City too, it's just that I'm about 25% through and I've realized that all the women around here are exceptionally ornamental.
It was something that I could definite ignore while playing Asylum. It's not as if Harley was a real boss fight because there wasn't much in the way of boss fights in the game. We only fight the Joker kind of peripherally as the final boss. Ivy is a cool boss, but kind of an odd (though fun) exception, considering the other boss fights are rather samey. The mooks were men probably because Arkham is a male prison, Ivy was probably locked up there because she is a worrisomely dangerous case. Otherwise, there was racial diversity in both the mooks and the cops, which I appreciated because I was really fed up after the Dark Knight Rises, where there was one Asian cop who died and yet the inmates were suspiciously diverse. Harley's skimpy nurse outfit pissed me off, as did Ivy's leaf thong, but hey, Harley is having fun, Ivy's one with nature or whatever, and one of her defining features and style is that she's sexual. They're being sexualized, but goodness, in video games? Comic books? What's new? Have you ever noticed that Bruce Timm's style of women as gotten worse since B:TAS? They've gone from relatively normal looking to absurd hourglass figures that get dull to look at when it's ALL THERE IS. This isn't to say I wasn't angry about that, because you don't know how much it bothered me, but at least the Harley I knew was there, in her voice and dialogue. At least Dr. Young, before her death, was a flawed individual. At least Ivy's boss fight wasn't Batman manfully manning his mandong to stay down. The sexualization frustrated me, but at least the women were written consistently as people.
Unfortunately for Arkham City, all of those justifications and excuses I mentioned are more or less completely gone. There are real boss fights in this game, but the first time we are confronted with Harley we just throw her at a wall and it's done. This after it is written in game that she is an exceptional gymnast, and her ruthless thirst for havoc is only surpassed by the Joker. No mention of her relationship with Ivy (and if you say there isn't one, I refer you to the spindle dick pricking curse above), but hey. Harley is dangerous and men don't "have a monopoly on murder" to quoth a criminal mastermind from Elementary. And then Harley flipped away and I didn't see her for ages again, so all thoughts about that kind of disappeared. I was momentarily pacified early on in the game because of the TYGER soldiers was a woman, so I wasn't thinking about it particularly hard until further along. It was really with the Ra's Al Ghul storyline that I started getting really annoyed. The female assassins were awesome, there was mention that one had taken out eight of them before finally being captured and then the rest of the story happens.
I could sort of mildly overlook the lack of women in this game until then, but at this point I started thinking about it. Arkham City is a city, there aren't female convicts at all? Harley, Ivy and Catwoman were thrown in here, surely there would be other women seeking territory and affiliation with the larger crime honchos. Obviously the reason Talia and the assassins were in Arkham City was because their base is VERY COINCIDENTALLY in the same location as the city, but really, that's it? And don't think I didn't notice how quick it is to take down the female assassins, game. I've been playing on hard and when it takes six centuries to beat one dude down without using a special combo, the fact that I knocked that woman out in less than half that time is exceedingly weird and suspicious, though the fact that Batman doesn't hold back because he's around a woman is somewhat appreciated. Not to mention the fact that though the dudes are pallette swapped somewhat, the women have one design and one design only. Fighting them lasts for about two minutes in the game, and then we're back to dudes dudes dudes.
Not to mention how stupid I think the Talia storyline is. I mean, it's no better in the comics, where it's all Talia thinking that they're meant for each other because Batman is the successor of the League, because for some reason she can't be the successor of the League, considering her intellect and combat ability. And then I realized a pattern in this game. All of these women are purported to have combat ability, these skills are listed in the bios that you can read (which I have been because I do things like that) but there is never any show or demonstration of it. Talia's guard are difficult but more fragile than the male mooks of the game. Talia, despite being an assassin in her own right, without any of the qualms about stabbing the shit out of people like Batman has, cannot and almost refuses to take the head of the League herself because she clearly doesn't think herself worthy, whether it's because her father told her so or because ~*~she's a woman~*~ is debatable but either way it's infuriating. For some reason, despite her guard being rather nicely covered, herself lacks a sports bra and the shot lingers on her tight pants that would definitely give me a wedgie and a hell of one too. Batman is narratively lauded for not giving into her sexy woman charms and Talia is hurt and cries away.
And then it hit me. It really hit me then. Women aren't welcome here other than as ornaments. Harley has no excuse to be out of her iconic harlequin costume other than the fact that men wanted to dress her up with a bit more frills. If anything it's very much like her initial redesign for the New 52, though now I feel bad because I don't think anything can be that atrocious, but the Joker is in his iconic tails, Bane is hardly redesigned, etc, etc. Maybe the Talia storyline bothered me because this whole angsty romance thing wasn't something that I was expecting out of this game and it rather annoyed me over a storyline where Batman fights Talia for her father because she was the second iconic woman in the game so far and it of course HAD to be a "BUT I LOVE YOU" plotline. Not that Harley's is much better but Harley's relationship with the Joker is twisted anyway, and it's really more of an obsession than a relationship. An obsession that the Joker abuses, but it's still annoying because there is a limited spectrum of plot important women shown in this game and they are all obsessed with their men. Couldn't they have teamed her up with Ivy for this one game? What happened to all this 3D writing that seems to be abruptly spread thin on the women? Even Oracle is far away and never seen, the one who shows up is Robin - I've yet to see Batgirl, though who knows which Batgirl that would be by this point now that DC has gotten rid of their two most iconic ones that wasn't Barbara Gordon (who should really stay as the Oracle). Catwoman was so far seen once - and we saved her - again lacking any support for the SACKS OF SKIN WE KEEP ON OUR CHEST, and seems to be kept in her costume by sheer force of her will. She did state that she didn't need saving, but narratively it felt more like a "yeah but you really did you ungrateful bitch" comment, so I can't feel placated with that either.
Grr. It's annoying because I like this game and I'm determined to finish it and who knows, maybe all the women team up and a half of Arkham City is revealed that over takes the other with bras and kicks to the sensitive areas, but let's just say I'm not holding my breath for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment