Yes, you are welcome to interpret this as being fraught with symbolism.
Personally, I have no idea who or what JB is, nor why there might be four of them. Happy Easter.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Friday, March 29, 2013
Upon Possibly Seeing Patty Hearst in Line at the Coffee Shop
Why does that lady behind me look familiar? She was dressed really nicely. Maybe she’s someone’s mom? No, I know her from somewhere else. Somewhere… Veronica Mars-y. Oh shit. Is that Patty Hearst? No. No. Why should Patty Hearst be at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in Los Feliz. Well, now that I think about it, why shouldn’t Patty Hearst be at the Coffee Bean in Los Feliz. This is a nice enough area. She is a woman of means. She can certainly afford an iced coffee. Oh shit — is she going to shoot people? No, wait — she doesn’t do that anymore. She’s normal now. She’s now a rich lady who doesn’t shoot people. Maybe it’s not her. She was standing with somebody else. Maybe it’s her daughter? Maybe it’s her granddaughter? Maybe if I just casually turn around…
(Drew turns around behind him but lingers long enough to capture Possible Patty’s attention. She makes direct eye contact and says “Hello” in a manner that clearly means “Please do not look at us.” Drew, dumbly responds with “Oh hi!” Drew feels he his reconnaissance mission has failed.)
Well that solved nothing. Would Patty Hearst call me out on staring? Or would she be all meek? Or would she just never go out in public without a bodyguard in case the SLA comes back? Did they all die except her? Wait — maybe that lady just didn’t want me staring at her because she thought I was leering at the younger girl… which I wasn’t. But that girl didn’t look like Patty Hearst. Did “Patty Hearst” look like Patty Hearst? It’s so hard to tell. Wait, if you were Patty Hearst — and you never will be at this rate — wouldn’t you just play with your pile of money and send out false Pattys to do all your errands and take the brunt of the gunfire? I would never leave the pool. Should I Google her? No, if it is Patty Hearst, she could totally see what I’m looking at on her phone. And then she might shoot me. Does Patty Hearst have a Twitter? No, of course not. Famous kidnapping victims can’t have Twitters. I wonder if —
(Suddenly, Drew is at the front of the line, and the girl at the register has raised her eyebrows in expectation of his order. After a few beats, “Do you know what you want?” Drew, again dumbly: “Oh, not at all. I haven’t even thought about it.”)
Conclusion: No conclusion. I will never know if that was Patty Hearst or not. Either way, at least this woman chose not to shoot me.
(Drew turns around behind him but lingers long enough to capture Possible Patty’s attention. She makes direct eye contact and says “Hello” in a manner that clearly means “Please do not look at us.” Drew, dumbly responds with “Oh hi!” Drew feels he his reconnaissance mission has failed.)
Well that solved nothing. Would Patty Hearst call me out on staring? Or would she be all meek? Or would she just never go out in public without a bodyguard in case the SLA comes back? Did they all die except her? Wait — maybe that lady just didn’t want me staring at her because she thought I was leering at the younger girl… which I wasn’t. But that girl didn’t look like Patty Hearst. Did “Patty Hearst” look like Patty Hearst? It’s so hard to tell. Wait, if you were Patty Hearst — and you never will be at this rate — wouldn’t you just play with your pile of money and send out false Pattys to do all your errands and take the brunt of the gunfire? I would never leave the pool. Should I Google her? No, if it is Patty Hearst, she could totally see what I’m looking at on her phone. And then she might shoot me. Does Patty Hearst have a Twitter? No, of course not. Famous kidnapping victims can’t have Twitters. I wonder if —
(Suddenly, Drew is at the front of the line, and the girl at the register has raised her eyebrows in expectation of his order. After a few beats, “Do you know what you want?” Drew, again dumbly: “Oh, not at all. I haven’t even thought about it.”)
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| patty, “tania” & selma rose |
Conclusion: No conclusion. I will never know if that was Patty Hearst or not. Either way, at least this woman chose not to shoot me.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Don't Let That Red Equals Signs Become a Hollow Gesture
Hey, cool, you changed your Facebook photo to show your support for a cause. Now follow that shit up.
Back at my college paper, I had an editor who forbade the staff from using the phrase "raising awareness" because he felt that it didn't convey meaning. Instead of just writing down "raising awareness" when you're interviewing one advocacy group or another, he said, you should press further and ask for specific examples of how they were raising awareness -- holding public talks, screaming at people from street corners, writing pithy slogans before doing nude backflips through the campus's central plaza, etc. -- because these examples would make for a more interesting sentence. He was correct. As it stands, "raising awareness" is a mushy, beige, inert phrase that's only slightly more exciting than other not-so-active verbs such as "being," "existing," and "continuing to exist." Even worse, it could be used by people who want to sound as though they're doing more than they actually are: "Raising awareness" could be a placeholder until they figure out exactly what they're doing, and they might not ever get to deciding how they were raising awareness. They might just have posted one or twice on some lonely message board. They may have taped a single flyer to a single telephone pole. But if you asked them down the line, "Hey, what exactly did you spend your funding on?", they could say, "Oh, we were working on raising awareness," and they'd not technically be lying. This is why reporters have follow-up questions.
I feel similarly about social media-spanning campaigns like the one that is currently symbolizing the need for marriage equality with red-and-pink versions of the Human Rights Campaign equals signs. On one hand, it's great that you're willing to make proclaim to the literate world that you believe gay people deserve marriage rights. (Why red-and-pink, I wonder. Is it for love, in the Valentine's Day sense of it? Is it because the love of rare steaks is as wonderful and pure as marital love?) But I worry that the people making this gesture will walk away from their computers feeling, "Yay. Today I did something." Because they didn't, really. They didn't donate money to the Human Rights Campaign or their local gay and lesbian center or some shelter for young people who have hit a serious rough patch. Even a small donation to any of these groups would be more helpful, in the long run, than would swapping out your Facebook photo for a few days. Sure, you'd make your beliefs known. With most people I know, these beliefs would only be news to, say, an aunt from back home who uses Facebook occasionally and didn't know that you had opinions nowadays, but I suppose it's possible that a lot of your friends might be surprised, for all I know about you, stranger reading this post.
Don't have money? Cool. Go talk to someone you know who does not want gay people to get married. As logically and calmly as possible, explain why their dislike for gay people shouldn't trump this minority's ability to enjoy basic rights. You will probably be unsuccessful, as the people who usually oppose gay marriage don't like to admit that they're doing so because they just don't like gay people, but at least you'll feel like you laid out an argument of which you can be proud.
And oh yeah -- vote when you have the opportunity, because old people love voting as much as they dislike gay marriage, statistically speaking.
I hope I'm being clear. There's nothing wrong with this campaign, but I just feel like you shouldn't let your participation in it become a hollow gesture. Ignore the superficial satisfaction you may feel. Be the good reporter and follow that shit up. In the end, it will take more than a red equals sign to make your Evangelical cousin from Fresno make an about-face on this issue, and it seems unlikely that Antonin Scalia will log into his Facebook, see a sea of meaty reds and suddenly reconsider his stance on the matter at hand.
Once again: Follow that shit up.
EDIT: Previous post notwithstanding, I swear I won't make every post on this blog me telling you what not to do. I am not that cranky. Not yet.
Back at my college paper, I had an editor who forbade the staff from using the phrase "raising awareness" because he felt that it didn't convey meaning. Instead of just writing down "raising awareness" when you're interviewing one advocacy group or another, he said, you should press further and ask for specific examples of how they were raising awareness -- holding public talks, screaming at people from street corners, writing pithy slogans before doing nude backflips through the campus's central plaza, etc. -- because these examples would make for a more interesting sentence. He was correct. As it stands, "raising awareness" is a mushy, beige, inert phrase that's only slightly more exciting than other not-so-active verbs such as "being," "existing," and "continuing to exist." Even worse, it could be used by people who want to sound as though they're doing more than they actually are: "Raising awareness" could be a placeholder until they figure out exactly what they're doing, and they might not ever get to deciding how they were raising awareness. They might just have posted one or twice on some lonely message board. They may have taped a single flyer to a single telephone pole. But if you asked them down the line, "Hey, what exactly did you spend your funding on?", they could say, "Oh, we were working on raising awareness," and they'd not technically be lying. This is why reporters have follow-up questions.
I feel similarly about social media-spanning campaigns like the one that is currently symbolizing the need for marriage equality with red-and-pink versions of the Human Rights Campaign equals signs. On one hand, it's great that you're willing to make proclaim to the literate world that you believe gay people deserve marriage rights. (Why red-and-pink, I wonder. Is it for love, in the Valentine's Day sense of it? Is it because the love of rare steaks is as wonderful and pure as marital love?) But I worry that the people making this gesture will walk away from their computers feeling, "Yay. Today I did something." Because they didn't, really. They didn't donate money to the Human Rights Campaign or their local gay and lesbian center or some shelter for young people who have hit a serious rough patch. Even a small donation to any of these groups would be more helpful, in the long run, than would swapping out your Facebook photo for a few days. Sure, you'd make your beliefs known. With most people I know, these beliefs would only be news to, say, an aunt from back home who uses Facebook occasionally and didn't know that you had opinions nowadays, but I suppose it's possible that a lot of your friends might be surprised, for all I know about you, stranger reading this post.
Don't have money? Cool. Go talk to someone you know who does not want gay people to get married. As logically and calmly as possible, explain why their dislike for gay people shouldn't trump this minority's ability to enjoy basic rights. You will probably be unsuccessful, as the people who usually oppose gay marriage don't like to admit that they're doing so because they just don't like gay people, but at least you'll feel like you laid out an argument of which you can be proud.
And oh yeah -- vote when you have the opportunity, because old people love voting as much as they dislike gay marriage, statistically speaking.
I hope I'm being clear. There's nothing wrong with this campaign, but I just feel like you shouldn't let your participation in it become a hollow gesture. Ignore the superficial satisfaction you may feel. Be the good reporter and follow that shit up. In the end, it will take more than a red equals sign to make your Evangelical cousin from Fresno make an about-face on this issue, and it seems unlikely that Antonin Scalia will log into his Facebook, see a sea of meaty reds and suddenly reconsider his stance on the matter at hand.
Once again: Follow that shit up.
EDIT: Previous post notwithstanding, I swear I won't make every post on this blog me telling you what not to do. I am not that cranky. Not yet.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Please Don't Ruin "Little Talks" for Me
Way back in 2010, I heard the great song called "Home," which was performed by Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeroes. Perhaps you've heard it because you own a TV and have ears.
Featuring as much talking as singing, this song reminded me of a modern Lee Hazlewood-Nancy Sinatra duet, and at the time, I thought I'd love it forever. But then the last three years happened, and now I will literally never again think, "Hey, you know, I could really go for listening to 'Home' right now," because I reached the point where I'd heard it too many times, and then I heard it another hundred more times. Even worse, Hollywood realized that "Home" worked as a shorthand for a certain folksy sort of affection, and then every TV show ever, even ones I liked, used it to underscore the moment when characters realize that home ISN'T A BUILDING AT ALL! IT'S WHERE YOU ARE! KISSKISSKISSKISS AND…. FADE OUT. Now, basically, the only use of "Home" I'd be okay with is over a montage of evicted families stranding outside their foreclosed homes, because only then would the rest of the world know the antipathy I feel toward it.
Last year, my friend Stephanie introduced me to a rousing little tune called "Little Talks," by the Icelandic group Of Monsters and Men. It's upbeat but rather grim lyrically, since it's about a lonely, empty house and maybe ghosts. The video looks like a game I'd really like to play and features neither empty houses nor ghosts but instead monsters and men because maybe the director thought the song name was the band name and vice-versa? Here, watch:
Appealing but weird video notwithstanding, I was happy to have "Little Talks" be my little indie rock pet that was weird and maybe most people liked but didn't know too much about. But then it got used in all the ads for that new Tina Fey movie that you probably aren't rushing to see and I realized that "Little Talks," similar to "Home," works as a shorthand for a "journey where you feel lots of emotions and then learn something about yourself and maybe you end up spinning in a field while laugh-crying." Yep, I'm suddenly worried that it will soon also be in every show or movie where the writing can't quite nail the moment.
Please, people who put songs in commercials or TV shows or whatever, can you just lay off this one? Because I would really rather continue enjoying this song, instead of instinctively skipping it and then wondering why I can't remember to remove it from my iTunes playlists. Don't Gotye this for me, world. Case in point: Remember when you weren't sure how to pronounce "Gotye"? Then that one song got overplayed and that pronunciation problem solved itself. Find something more top 40 and make that your next "Hey Soul Sister," your next song by Smash Mouth whose name I can't think of, your Black Eyed Peas song that was apparently written with the sole purpose of being used in commercials. Please.
(And if you're an Of Monsters and Men member and you're reading this, I'm really sorry. I know you want money, but trust me: Artistic credibility is so much better. Really.)
Featuring as much talking as singing, this song reminded me of a modern Lee Hazlewood-Nancy Sinatra duet, and at the time, I thought I'd love it forever. But then the last three years happened, and now I will literally never again think, "Hey, you know, I could really go for listening to 'Home' right now," because I reached the point where I'd heard it too many times, and then I heard it another hundred more times. Even worse, Hollywood realized that "Home" worked as a shorthand for a certain folksy sort of affection, and then every TV show ever, even ones I liked, used it to underscore the moment when characters realize that home ISN'T A BUILDING AT ALL! IT'S WHERE YOU ARE! KISSKISSKISSKISS AND…. FADE OUT. Now, basically, the only use of "Home" I'd be okay with is over a montage of evicted families stranding outside their foreclosed homes, because only then would the rest of the world know the antipathy I feel toward it.
Last year, my friend Stephanie introduced me to a rousing little tune called "Little Talks," by the Icelandic group Of Monsters and Men. It's upbeat but rather grim lyrically, since it's about a lonely, empty house and maybe ghosts. The video looks like a game I'd really like to play and features neither empty houses nor ghosts but instead monsters and men because maybe the director thought the song name was the band name and vice-versa? Here, watch:
Please, people who put songs in commercials or TV shows or whatever, can you just lay off this one? Because I would really rather continue enjoying this song, instead of instinctively skipping it and then wondering why I can't remember to remove it from my iTunes playlists. Don't Gotye this for me, world. Case in point: Remember when you weren't sure how to pronounce "Gotye"? Then that one song got overplayed and that pronunciation problem solved itself. Find something more top 40 and make that your next "Hey Soul Sister," your next song by Smash Mouth whose name I can't think of, your Black Eyed Peas song that was apparently written with the sole purpose of being used in commercials. Please.
(And if you're an Of Monsters and Men member and you're reading this, I'm really sorry. I know you want money, but trust me: Artistic credibility is so much better. Really.)
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Centaurs for Girls!
I’m not saying you’re going to write a fantasy novel one day. That’s up to you. But suppose you do sit down and pen a tale of swords and magic and weird sex, you may want to jump into it prepared with the kind of vocabulary that will endear to your target audience of nitpicking nerds. In advance, you’re welcome.
Why would someone decide it would be fun to make Medusa into a centaur? Classical fan fiction, I would guess. A fun thing to note, perhaps: There’s a Wikipedia category for centaurs and another one for fictional centaurs, and not all the pages appearing in the former appear in the latter.
When I think about the logistics of a female version of these randy, barechested horsedudes, it seems logical that there would be a lot of the various geeky media, but I can only think of three off the top of my head. The “Pastoral Symphony” segment of the original Fantasia features some whose brazen toplessness seems surprising, given how the film was released back in 1940. (If Ariel and her type wore clamshell bras, should the Fantasia centaurettes be wearing horseshoe bras?)
And then there’s Golden Axe, a game that’s yielded some interesting bits for word nerds previously on this blog. In the second arcade installment f the game, you could play as a female centaur named Dora, who’s easily the most bad-ass character to get saddled with that name ever, even if her weapon is a weird, American Gladiators-style jousting Q-tip.
There’s also centaur Leela in the Futurama fantasy parody episode, but I’m not sure if this is poking fun at the lameness of “busty lady centaur” stock character (is a thing, maybe?) or just assigning Leela a role that’s awkward and unfeminine. Whatever the case (and whatever the fate of the horse-centric literature that will one day provide us all with a window in your psyche), know this much about this fancy new word kentaurides: As is the case with the related word centaur, we are not especially sure where it came from. The centaurs themselves we know come from the drunken, unholy union between stable boy and equine beauty. That’s just common sense biology. The wordy end of it, however, is a bit murkier.
kentaurides (ken-tar-EE-deez) — noun: the female centaur.Yep, there’s a special word for lady centaurs, even though they weren’t popular even back in the day. According to Wikipedia, the best-known in Greek mythology was Hylonome, and she’s only known for killing herself when her centaur husband dies in battle. That sets the bar pretty low for female centaurs making something of themselves. Perhaps as a result of not being all that interesting, these figures show up more in art than they do in literature.
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| second-century mosaic, via wikipedia |
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| seventh-century relief inexplicably depicting medusa as a centaur, via wikipedia |
When I think about the logistics of a female version of these randy, barechested horsedudes, it seems logical that there would be a lot of the various geeky media, but I can only think of three off the top of my head. The “Pastoral Symphony” segment of the original Fantasia features some whose brazen toplessness seems surprising, given how the film was released back in 1940. (If Ariel and her type wore clamshell bras, should the Fantasia centaurettes be wearing horseshoe bras?)
And then there’s Golden Axe, a game that’s yielded some interesting bits for word nerds previously on this blog. In the second arcade installment f the game, you could play as a female centaur named Dora, who’s easily the most bad-ass character to get saddled with that name ever, even if her weapon is a weird, American Gladiators-style jousting Q-tip.
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| via |
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| via |
Previous words of the week after the jump.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
The Truth Behind Hateful Advertising
Dermatologists HATE her! … because she has really terrible skin from using bullshit home remedies.
Trainers HATE him! … because he has really bad form and he could be encouraging novice weightlifters to injure themselves.
Weight loss experts HATE THEM! … because they're rather comfortable with their bodies as they appear now.
Foreign language tutors HATE them! … because they're all stuck up and shit.
Wedding planners HATE her! … because she's just an awful person and that fucking dog is not house-trained.
Grief counselors HATE him! … because it turns out that grief counselors have issues they need to work through too.
Midwives HATE her! … because she made a racist joke at the midwife convention.
Tap dance instructors HATE him! … because he's always pointing out the ways that tap dance is super dumb.
Teenage girls HATE them! … because YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT IT'S LIKE AND I'LL NEVER BE PRETTY AND I WISH I WAS DEAD.
Lyric poets HATE her! … because her verses have too many syllables in them and that is sloppy writing.
Homeopathic care advisors HATE him! … because he's a doctor who prescribes real medicine.
Assembly line workers HATE them! … because they're the boss's kids and they are not respectful.
Investment bankers HATE her! … because she broke their hearts.
Medical doctors HATE her! … because she keeps smoking after she had that stroke.
Bartenders HATE him! … because he quit drinking, whereas his alcoholism has previously been helping pay off that new boat.
Trainers HATE him! … because he has really bad form and he could be encouraging novice weightlifters to injure themselves.
Weight loss experts HATE THEM! … because they're rather comfortable with their bodies as they appear now.
Foreign language tutors HATE them! … because they're all stuck up and shit.
Wedding planners HATE her! … because she's just an awful person and that fucking dog is not house-trained.
Grief counselors HATE him! … because it turns out that grief counselors have issues they need to work through too.
Midwives HATE her! … because she made a racist joke at the midwife convention.
Tap dance instructors HATE him! … because he's always pointing out the ways that tap dance is super dumb.
Teenage girls HATE them! … because YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT IT'S LIKE AND I'LL NEVER BE PRETTY AND I WISH I WAS DEAD.
Lyric poets HATE her! … because her verses have too many syllables in them and that is sloppy writing.
Homeopathic care advisors HATE him! … because he's a doctor who prescribes real medicine.
Assembly line workers HATE them! … because they're the boss's kids and they are not respectful.
Investment bankers HATE her! … because she broke their hearts.
Medical doctors HATE her! … because she keeps smoking after she had that stroke.
Bartenders HATE him! … because he quit drinking, whereas his alcoholism has previously been helping pay off that new boat.
Or, you know, maybe the dermatologists just hate her because she's peeling off her skin like a snake, and that is nightmarish and terrifying?
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Finding the Feminine (if Not the Feminist) in Early Nintendo
If you don’t read about video games, then you probably don’t know of Anita Sarkeesian. She is a feminist blogger whose talking head stars in the “Feminist Frequency” online series, and she recently rose to a greater level of prominence as a result of a successful Kickstarster campaign to explore the role of female characters in video games. The campaign also elicited a shitstorm of harassment that basically proved Sarkeesian’s point that video game culture can have a nasty, misogynist bent to it, but the first video premiered on March 7 in spite of the small but active band trying to keep girls out of the treehouse.
In the first installment, “Damsels in Distress,” Sarkeesian seems to be laying groundwork for the rest of the series, explaining the origins of the “lady tied to the train tracks” stock character and how it relates to video games. She actually talks about video games a lot less than you might expect — like I said, I’m guessing she’s building a foundation, but there’s a point when you may think, “She’s still going on about this?” — and the two franchises that get the most attention are Mario and Zelda. This too has earned her some criticism, as newer franchises feature more progressive politics than do these series that have remained fundamentally unchanged since they debuted in the 80s. But it’s Nintendo, and in addition to Mario and Zelda being two of the most long-lived successful video game franchises ever, those early days of the original Nintendo Entertainment System were hugely important to the medium. Thus, it’s a good place to start. Neither series has ever come close to gender parity, and regardless of whether you think they should, that is exactly why this very month has seen the release of hacked versions of Donkey Kong and Legend of Zelda that allow you to play as Pauline or as Princess Zelda and rescue their respective dudes.
This all made me think of a subject I haven’t picked up in a while.
Now, one of the responses to Sarkeesian’s first video pointed out that she didn’t mention one of the reasons the Mario and Zelda don’t evolve: Their creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, isn’t big on plot elements. He’d rather minimize backstory, let players get to the fun part and not bury the essence of the game. Especially back in the earlier days, Miyamoto wasn’t about to let co-workers who thought otherwise meddle with his brain babies. (That’s less the case now, and it’s worth pointing out that as the stories behind these games grew deeper, we got less wimpy female characters, like Rosalina and Midna.)
In that same early age of home console Nintendo, however, Mario and Zelda weren’t Nintendo’s only attempts at launching power franchises. They were just the most successful ones. A few months after Legend of Zelda hit shelves, Nintendo debuted two other games: Metroid and Kid Icarus. The two are “sister” series in more than one way. For example, Metroid baddies show up in Kid Icarus. In both, the screen can scroll both vertically and horizontally, whereas the first Mario and Zelda didn’t. Both were developed without Miyamoto’s participation; Gunpei Yokoi served as producer for both, and many of the staffers who worked on Metroid shifted to Icarus as they finished their work. Both didn’t receive sequels until years later. And both offer major roles to female characters that Mario and Zelda do not.
In Metroid, of course, the big reveal players get for completing certain requirements is finding out that Samus, the robot-looking dude they’ve been controlling all this time, is actually a woman — and what a woman! She’s wearing a weird mom bathing suit and everything!
Most people know that. But the game also pits Samus against a female(ish) big bad: the Mother Brain. There’s not too much explicitly female about a cycloptic brain in a jar, but all the literature discussing the Mother Brain as a “she” — even on Captain N, where she was inexplicably voiced by the guy who voiced Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors.
In the third Metroid game, the brain gets a body, and graphics designer Toru Osawa explained that his initial impulse had been to make her look like “an old lady living in my apartment complex.” You can still kind of see that in the final design:
That’s something that literally never occurred to me until this month: that a game debuting that early in the story of Nintendo would have a female hero taking down a female villain — an all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful big bad, no less.
Kid Icarus also boasts better feminist credentials. Though the hero is male — more a boy than a man, though I’m unsure if that matters — the big bad is female. It’s Medusa, who in the universe of the game is the goddess of darkness, and offered as the antithesis to Palutena, the goddess of light and the game’s damsel in distress. (Importantly, Medusa looks like a woman, but she also has a Mother Brain-y like form where she appears as a huge, one-eyed head… thing.) Yes, there’s a woman awaiting rescue at the end of the game, but there is something different about it being another woman who locked her up, especially when those characters function as stand-ins for God and the Devil, or at least Athena and a Lady Hades (Ladeez).
This all proves nothing, of course, and it’s worth underscoring that Metroid and Kid Icarus didn’t find the success that Super Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda did. The former only became a successful franchise in 2002 and the latter just received its second sequel in 2012. But when you’re looking at the early days of Nintendo, with Princess Peach and Princess Zelda mostly sitting around in dungeons, it’s kind of cool that female characters in other games were being given something interesting to do: be evil, get captured or take of their clothes at the end of the game. There’s a case to be made for finding elements of the sacred feminine in Mario and Zelda, but it’s a dig to get there. With Metroid and Kid Icarus, it’s right there in the instruction booklet.
Gender and video games, previously:
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| image via |
This all made me think of a subject I haven’t picked up in a while.
Now, one of the responses to Sarkeesian’s first video pointed out that she didn’t mention one of the reasons the Mario and Zelda don’t evolve: Their creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, isn’t big on plot elements. He’d rather minimize backstory, let players get to the fun part and not bury the essence of the game. Especially back in the earlier days, Miyamoto wasn’t about to let co-workers who thought otherwise meddle with his brain babies. (That’s less the case now, and it’s worth pointing out that as the stories behind these games grew deeper, we got less wimpy female characters, like Rosalina and Midna.)
In that same early age of home console Nintendo, however, Mario and Zelda weren’t Nintendo’s only attempts at launching power franchises. They were just the most successful ones. A few months after Legend of Zelda hit shelves, Nintendo debuted two other games: Metroid and Kid Icarus. The two are “sister” series in more than one way. For example, Metroid baddies show up in Kid Icarus. In both, the screen can scroll both vertically and horizontally, whereas the first Mario and Zelda didn’t. Both were developed without Miyamoto’s participation; Gunpei Yokoi served as producer for both, and many of the staffers who worked on Metroid shifted to Icarus as they finished their work. Both didn’t receive sequels until years later. And both offer major roles to female characters that Mario and Zelda do not.
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| images via here and here |
Most people know that. But the game also pits Samus against a female(ish) big bad: the Mother Brain. There’s not too much explicitly female about a cycloptic brain in a jar, but all the literature discussing the Mother Brain as a “she” — even on Captain N, where she was inexplicably voiced by the guy who voiced Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors.
 |
| image via |
Kid Icarus also boasts better feminist credentials. Though the hero is male — more a boy than a man, though I’m unsure if that matters — the big bad is female. It’s Medusa, who in the universe of the game is the goddess of darkness, and offered as the antithesis to Palutena, the goddess of light and the game’s damsel in distress. (Importantly, Medusa looks like a woman, but she also has a Mother Brain-y like form where she appears as a huge, one-eyed head… thing.) Yes, there’s a woman awaiting rescue at the end of the game, but there is something different about it being another woman who locked her up, especially when those characters function as stand-ins for God and the Devil, or at least Athena and a Lady Hades (Ladeez).
This all proves nothing, of course, and it’s worth underscoring that Metroid and Kid Icarus didn’t find the success that Super Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda did. The former only became a successful franchise in 2002 and the latter just received its second sequel in 2012. But when you’re looking at the early days of Nintendo, with Princess Peach and Princess Zelda mostly sitting around in dungeons, it’s kind of cool that female characters in other games were being given something interesting to do: be evil, get captured or take of their clothes at the end of the game. There’s a case to be made for finding elements of the sacred feminine in Mario and Zelda, but it’s a dig to get there. With Metroid and Kid Icarus, it’s right there in the instruction booklet.
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