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Have you ever noticed that, with a few notable exceptions,
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basically all female characters in video games fall into a small handful of clichés and stereotypes?
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I'm Anita Sarkeesian
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and I run the video web series Feminist Frequency.
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As a pop culture critic I look at movies,
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TV shows, comic books, and of course video games.
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In addition to being loads of fun to play,
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research has found that gaming can improve
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problem solving skills, teamwork, creative thought and multi tasking;
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and improve hand eye coordination and enhance perceptual and cognitive abilities.
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Unfortunately in addition to all of these benefits,
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many games tend to reinforce and amplify sexist and downright misogynist ideas about women.
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In this particular project,
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which I'm calling Tropes vs. Women and Video Games,
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I'm going to create a series of five videos that look at and deconstruct
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the most common and the most stereotypical representations of women in games.
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Video games are an integral and growing part of our pop culture today
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and as with all pop culture media the gaming industry is playing a role in helping to shape our society,
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either by challenging or more often reinforcing existing values beliefs and behaviors.
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This new video series will primarily focus on
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tracking five stereotypical representations of women throughout the history of video games.
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I'm going to look at the damsel in distress,
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the fighting f- toy, the sexy sidekick, the sexy villainess,
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and the most common trope in video games women as background decoration.
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Last year I released a successful video called Tropes vs. Women
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where I looked at the reoccurring patterns of the way women are portrayed in the media.
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"A trope is a common pattern in a story,
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or a recognizable attribute in a character that conveys information to the audience.
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A trope becomes a cliché when it is overused."
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Some of the tropes I looked at were
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the manic pixie dream girl, the smurfette principal, and women in refrigerators.
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Those last two are extremely common in video games as well.
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"You've probably guessed by now that this trope
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was named after the only female smurf in all of smurfville…
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but one day the evil wizard Gargamel decided on a devilish plan to sabotage smurfdom,
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and how will he do that?
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Yes, that's right by creating a female smurf."
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I'll get them through their hearts;
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I will send them a smurfette."
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What I try to do in my videos,
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is give people the language to understand and talk about issues
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of gender and sexism using accessible examples from popular culture.
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Feminist Frequency videos have been used in
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middle school, high school, and university classrooms.
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They have been integrated into the curriculum of media studies, gender studies, and law school programs.
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Parents have even reached out to me saying
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that they used my videos to spark discussions with their kids about representations of women in the media.
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"So what happens when something in Heartlake city catches on fire?
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I guess you’d have to call the boys to put it out.
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