Mass Media Messages Through Gaming

Happy New Year and Cheers to you and yours!

This holiday season I shifted gears and bought a television into my home. Since then, my son and I have enjoyed hours of Netflix and video games!

On Netflix, we have been watching Cheers, the 1982 sitcom that takes place in a bar in Boston.

We finished the first season yesterday and we were both very much satisfied with it. It was funny and provocative.

Within the first season, Cheers had episodes on marriage, feminism, masculinity, racism, dating, homophobia and alcoholism. Thirty years later, theses issues are still important to discuss in mainstream media.





On our PS3, we have been playing Star Wars Legos together, and we are about 70% of the way done.

When I am working on my computer, I sometimes look over at him playing Resident Evil 5, and I can't help but to wonder how race and gender play out in video games.

In Resident Evil, the main character, who is a man, appears as muscular and the second character, who is a woman, is scantily clad, and both of whom are light-skinned.

You might notice in the poster that the male character is facing forward.  This is a typical stance for men in ads.  Please also notice the female character is facing to the side, but her body is facing backwards.  And more to the point, her butt is facing forwards in an enticing (vs. menacing) stance.

In Star Wars Legos, most of the characters are male with only a few female characters sprinkled in. When the game first starts, the characters that are automatically selected for both controllers are always male and light-skinned.

You can see the cover of the video game here with 9 male characters displayed and one female character.  All of the human characters that are not masked are presumably white. The one female takes centerstage with her right eye winking, her lips kissing, and her outfit ready to entice!

These are just my observations on two games in my own home. However, I am not alone in this discovery.  Below is a video put together by Feminist Frequency: Anita Sarkeesian.  She has compiled characters from video games and made some interesting discoveries.   
 
Please watch the video to learn about how she is discovering the tropes in videogames and what you can do to support her work.

BTW, tropes = a theme.