Media and pop culture are massive factors that constantly affect how we live our day-to-day lives. Whether or not we realize it or not, pop culture is constantly affecting our mindsets and opinions by having us bombarded with celebrities, games, films, and television. While watching just an hour of television one would be exposed to hundreds of different ads, celebrities and other pop culture phenomenons. In modern times, one of the biggest pop culture items that people of all ages are being exposed to are video games. One game in specific, Fallout 3, is immensely popular among teens and adults for action and adventure, but what many do not realize is that women are portrayed in the game as equals to men, unlike most other games and most other mediums of media and pop culture.
Fallout 3 is one of the most popular games to have been released in the past 10 years. Globally it has sold several million copies and it has one won countless awards for the outstanding game play, soundtracks, script, and even its graphics. The game is about a wanderer who escapes his safe haven after nuclear bombs have been dropped around the entire country. There is no stable government and people just look out for themselves. In the game, you wander throughout the massive world meeting people doing jobs, killing other people and mutated creatures, and there is always something to be found. One of the biggest points of this game, though, is that you are able to make your character a women, not just a man.
The female character within the game plays very differently from the male. The female character is able to do things the male cannot such as coerce other male people met on her journey to telling her secrets using her feminine charm, while also still having the power of a strong male character. The women character is also never objectifies by random men and is never seen as weak or intolerable just because she is a female. This is very different than most other females with other video games such as the Tomb Raider series or the Dead or Alive series.
This is a small example of that "feminine charm" mentioned earlier. This is more of a joke in the game than anything else, the 'threesome' mentioned doesn't actually occur. This is just one of the many times a player can use the 'Black Widow' perk as a woman to influence men. Here the player uses her feminine charm to influence a man to go find the character an item that is almost impossible to find.
In the Tomb Raider series Lara Croft, the main character, is a very powerful woman, but is constantly objectified and is constant subject to "male gaze." Croft hardly wears any clothing on her adventures except for a very short tank top and a pear of abnormally short shorts for someone who is planning on adventuring, climbing and fighting. She is seen as no more than a toy to men meant to be stared at and have her body be more important than the game itself thus subjecting Croft to male gaze. Male gaze is the main reason the game was such a huge success because men are supposed to like killing and boobs, and all of that was encompassed in the Tomb Raider series. Also, the Dead or Alive series is very similar to aspects in Tomb Raider. This series is based on half naked, big breasted women fighting each other all while their bodies bounce and jiggle. It is quite demeaning towards women as the characters is the name are no more than punching pairs of breasts trying to take each others heads off. This game has only lasted several years and with few iterations because of male gaze upon the women fighters and the many men who just buy the game in order to see some fake, animated bodies. The main reason Fallout 3 is very different and on a whole other level than these titles is that Fallout 3 manages to have female main characters without having them objectified or subject to male gaze. You main character is never harassed or told she is not worth as much as a man. The female character may use some of her feminine tactics to get ahead, but she never walks around the wasteland with nothing but a bikini and she does not dance and giggle to amuse the male player holding onto the controller.
Noticeable difference?
vs 
Dead or Alive fighters Your character in Fallout 3
Fallout 3 allows any player, man, woman,or other, to experience a game as a man or woman without having to stare at women half naked and deal with women being portrayed as objects or tools. For these reasons, Fallout 3 shows that women are powerful and equals to men and just because there are many games that blatantly objectify women, there are still some that respect women and do not demean them either.
No comments:
Post a Comment