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A podcast by students enrolled in Film Studies/Gender Studies 404. Students will discuss topics of gender and identity in In Sound Mind, What Remains of Edith Finch, and LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.
Hello everyone and welcome back to Miranda and
Kyle's podcast, Heavy Rain, Pain and Petricore.
This is the second part of a two-part series, our
final part, and we are very happy to share our
findings with you guys. So here we go. This
podcast will be divided into two segments. First
we'll discuss the violence against and the
sexualization of women in video games, and how
those tie into heavy rain before dividing into an
analysis that is to counter the narrative put
forth in the game. How are mothers depicted? And
what do these depictions say about society's
understanding of parental roles? I'm Kyle Lloyd,
and I'm Miranda Fulman. And starting off today,
I'm going to kick it over to Miranda because
they've been doing a lot of work on this and I'm
excited to hear what they say. So I guess I will
start us off with a quick summary of how women are
depicted in heavy rain. We have two leading ladies
being Madison, who is our journalist character and
then Lauren, who is a grieving mother, turned
private investigator along with our other private
investigator, Scott Shelby. Overall, women are
depicted strongly as damsels in distress. They are
often kept to the side used for emotional gut
punches and absolutely not any real relevance to
the plot beyond forwarding the men in the plot. To
pull in a quote from the article Violence Against
Women in Video Games by Beck et All. Notably, the
trend of portraying sex-type images of women and
violence against women in popular video games
continues to proliferate and promulgate in video
games. Out of the top 10 video games listed mid
-year 2010, most have sexual violent content,
including violence against women and sexual
objectification of women. In the game, you see
several depictions of sexualization of Madison,
whether it be her being basically nude the entire
portion of her chapter or the camera angles
sexualizing her to make other characters creepier
in a way. And overall, Lauren's character starts
off as being depicted as a sex worker before any
of her actual story is shown off. Media in general
has a horrible habit of sexualizing women, but
video games have stayed in this realm of
sexualization and portray violence against women
constantly. Some extra examples of stuff that
we've seen in class alone are debates around
Abby's body in the last of us part 2, Bayonetta's
entire character from the Bayonetta franchise, and
the ability to assault and or murder sex workers
in the Grand Theft Auto series. Another quote from
the article Not only are gamers increasingly being
exposed to video games containing sexualization
and violence against women, but research also
indicates that such heavy exposure can be
excessive. I think a really common trope within
heavy rain is the camera angles because it's such
a narratively focused game. It loves to play with
different angles and shots and tries to make it as
either creepy or intense as possible. And I don't
think it benefits itself when trying to depict
women in a healthy light. And just like Miranda
said, you can even see that within the controls of
the game. It's heavily based on quick time events,
and the thing with quick time events is that
they're easily portrayed within the game, thus
making more time to emphasize on camera angles,
character design, and plot line development. And
just to see that if you think about it, it's not
the most effort that goes into a game, although it
is definitely hard to program. At the same time,
it allows these artists, these developers to delve
into the more misogynistic points of game
development, things such as that nature. And
there's tons of games out there as well that don't
have any purpose of being sexual at all. There are
several action games. First person shooters that
I've played in the past that they just seem to
have no business being that sexual. And a common
theme, I feel like the two that run together is
the sexualization of gore. You have games like
Bubblegum Chainsaw. You have games like Yandere
Simulator, where it's encouraged to take like
panty pictures of girls for points in game. So
it's pretty ridiculous out here. The platform
right now is in a very, very sensitive space. Tiki
Bus going along. I'd like to move us towards my
strange idea when talking about this game. And
that's the depiction of mothers in game. In Heavy
Rain, nearly every single female character in the
game, besides our playable character, Madison, is
a mother. And they are depicted as having some of
the worst mental health in the game and some of
the worst lives in the game post murder of their
child. Because all of them are victims of the
origami killer in game. I wanted to compare some
further research on mothers in video games to
fathers in video games because the main central
plot of the game is Ethan, our father character,
trying to say this son. So I started looking at an
article called Thought Experiments in Video Games,
exploring the unethics of motherhood in frictional
games as Amnesia Rebirth by Atene Mendelite. In
it, she writes, the player is confronted not only
with the suffering of the child, but with the
grieving process of her parents too, as the
absence that follows is possibly even more
excruciating than depictions of such physical
suffering. This quote really stood out to me
because we start the game off with the death of
Ethan and Grace Mars' son, Jason. And the entire
time we are shown Ethan's perspective, but nothing
of Grace's. And both Jason's death, Grace is shown
as a grieving mother and absolutely zero plot
relevance besides calling her ex-husband possibly
the origami killer. Another quote that I really
like from this article is, while the player might
not support her actions throughout the game, and
in fact the game problematizes many of them, he or
she understands why Tossi makes the choices that
she does. Throughout the game we are forced to
deal with whatever choices that Ethan chooses to
do to save his son. Regardless of the safety of
other people, the risks he has on his own life
because of this, and the amount of just absolutely
illegal activities he commits for the sake of
saving his son. And we have to try and rationalize
it because he is trying to save his son and that's
the ethical side of things. But where are the
mothers? Why are they all shown as just damsels in
distress incapable of doing any of the things that
Ethan has shown to do? The plot of the game forces
the fathers to be doing the dangerous things
because of the origami killer's backstory. I will
not get into it, firstpoitlers. But I think that
there is a severe lack of maternal instinct being
shown. Like, mothers are some of the scariest
women I have ever met in my life because their
urge to defend their children is so powerful. And
yet it's not depicted ever in this game at all.
And I just don't understand that. You heard it
here first. I don't understand it either. There's
a lot of things about this game that, you know, I
don't really understand. But besides that, we
strive. We strive forward. We keep going. Now with
that, I think we are all good. Thanks so much for
listening. Have a good night. Peace out.