So my previous post about the Equality Now campaign to ban rape-simulator video games in Japan provoked some discussion on Facebook. One of my friends countered that fantasy is a space that should not be policed: as a feminist, I agree with him, which got me thinking that...
1) the problem is not the rape fantasy per se (OK, it is a problem for me as a rape survivor but whatev), but that it's not really a fantasy, is it? It's a reality: men can and do rape women (and men) every day, all around the world, and it's (almost) socially and legally acceptable. Whether as a weapon of war, or a tool of social control, rape - including child rape - is not some unexplored fantasy but an expression of patriarchy
2) the other problem, then, is that the video game perpetuates the normativisation of rape. Of course, there's no direct connection between playing a game/watching a film and enacting what you've done/seen therein, but all cultural texts do contribute to shaping our understanding of cultural norms.
My friend agreed these points, but argued that censorship wasn't the way to go. I agree, of course: mass sterilisation and/or castration, followed by forcible re-education, would be far preferable.
Kidding! But can you imagine if there were a video game that allowed - nay, encouraged - women to do so? Say, based on the film Baise-Moi, or on Angela Carter's novel The Passion of New Eve. How much fun would that be! How many copies would they sell! Or even a game based on freakin' Thelma and Louise - with the opportunity to rewrite the ending, naturally.
Because that, I guess, is the alternative to censorship, to do what Carter did so brilliantly and re-write, re-vision, re-make in the image of your own fantasy. So this is a call to feminist programmers and hackers out there: given that it was possible to create a patch that stripped Lara Croft and one that simulated hardcore sex in GTF, how about a patch that re-writes RapeLay so that when the male POV character chases one of the sisters, the other (or the mother) stabs him or, in a more realistic and actually more satisfying conclusion, calls the cops and gets him arrested (preferably followed by the player's console getting locked for a day in real life). "Success", ie: winning the game, could be patched as NOT raping the children.
And for those who think this would never fly in the big-bucks gaming world, take heart from this article, headlined: "The naked truth: sex doesn't sell games."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I hope you don't mind a man pointing this out, but there are already games like that out there. For example, a Japanese game called "Mugen Kairou" (Dreaming Hallway) features as the protagonist a pubescent boy named "Tarou" who is introduced to a family of four sisters and their mother as the family "pet" and routinely abused sexually and physically in explicit detail.
While they are not as many, a sizeable number of porngraphic games in Japan are made by women and for women include male on male, female on male sexual violence.
I firmly oppose any real violence toward women, physical, sexual, psychological or otherwise; but I hope you understand why I'm slightly agitated with the way people are framing the rapelay game issue. Yes, there already are games that feature men on women, women on women, men on men, and women on men sexual violence, but ultimately they are not real and they do not hurt anyone in their production.
Post a Comment