Women and Dolls
2022-02-13
"Beautiful... beautiful... I must be beautiful!"
Take a man writing a story as an example. They would project themselves onto a male character with a rich backstory, perhaps indulge in power fantasies by making him heroic? The author uses their experience living as a man to create a relatable character because the person they know best is themselves. They would eventually introduce a woman but their attitude suddenly changes, they write the character in a way that their identity revolves around the fact that they're a woman. There is a distancing between her and the audience because to the author, women are mysterious, fundamentally different, unexplainable, and they will ultimately perceive them as the distinct “other” that they can't help but eroticize or alienate. The discussion surrounding sexualization of women runs into the common rebuttal that art aims to romanticize and if the male is equally sexualized there is no problem, which I would respond sexualization is not the problem in the first place but it is rather the treatment of characters as eye candy and the asymmetrical perception of identity which males are the default and women are the relative being. This is about existence, freedom of identity, and defining what it means to be human, not raunchy fashion criticism. To me the gender problem lies in the overstated “otherness” of gender.
In Nier Automoata, Simone is depicted as a doll that wants attention after being rejected by Jean. The fight starts as a standard bullet hell but at some point the camera forces itself into a top down perspective, which Simone is completely obscured from view as she continues to shoot barrages of projectiles. She screams throughout the fight, I must become more beautiful. It’s a cautionary tale on how one must seize their own identity and not to obsess over projecting their self worth onto others, as DeBeauvoir argues that women have the responsibility to not default to the submissive doll identity but to actively think about their autonomy as being. As for fan service, my problem lies not in a puritan reaction to sexy outfits but the fact that works that emphasize aesthetics tend to be shallow as hell. Characters do not have to be reduced to eye candy, if they are not imbued with meaning and autonomy, they are ultimately artificial.
Take any of Fromsoft characters that are women, for whatever reason the games obsesses over the symbolism of fertility and inferiority through women (Priscilla’s chastity belt, Rosaria’s rebirth, Fire maiden’s curse of submission, Bed of Chaos being a literal uterus, Arianna’s umbilical cord, the doll…being a doll, most of the cast being helpless and disabled in some way etc) while the man does not once represent itself as a penis, because there are much more important themes reserved for them. Women are constrained to the biological while the man gets to explore higher forms of freedom.
The quote “One is Not Born, but Rather Becomes, a Woman” or in Satre’s case, “Existence precedes essence”, reinforces the broad existentialist thesis as identity not being predetermined but it is fluid for we have the freedom to choose it and have the responsibility to live it authentically. In Dark Souls’ case, the women does not go beyond the predetermined essence while the man has the luxury to go on the quest for being. Yuria, Sirris, debatably Anri is the handful that does not revolve around their femininity as their existence, they just happened to be which makes for more interesting character. Women in Dark Souls are mostly helpless, soft spoken, submissive characters that offer unconditional love for the protagonist after completing their quests. Did Renalla’s story really had to be a carbon copy or Rosaria about motherhood and babies when all the other Gods have such interesting identities? Is it realistic to the time period? I don’t know, maybe. Are they interesting characters? No.
"Woman has ovaries and a uterus; such are the particular conditions that lock her in her subjectivity; some even say she thinks with her hormones. Man vainly forgets that his anatomy also includes hormones and testicles. He grasps his body as a direct and normal link with the world that he believes he apprehends in all objectivity, whereas he considers woman’s body as an obstacle, a prison, burdened by everything that particularizes it.” (The Second Sex, pg.16-17).
The familiar man and the unfamiliar un-man. The identity of woman primarily becomes “woman”, not “human”. And I confess, I’m a passive bystander on the topic of gender identity and I don’t think it’s malicious intent on dehumanizing characters, but it’s the case of “she breasted boobily to the stairs, and titted downwards”, which I can’t help but mock the innocence. However innocence is never morally pure, I immediately start taking shots when anyone claims that these portrayals are humanist or feminist because that doesn't cut it.
Even if the depiction of femininity is progressive, say the buff woman trope, it still faces the same issue of shallow character development. Their identity revolves around a cheap twist, which only in quasi good faith, creates the facade that it challenges the traditional identity of gender while the the character still revolves solely around “womanhood”. De Beauvoir extends that idea in saying that women participating in the workforce gets baited by inheriting masculine identities but still serves the role of satisfying the needs of another being hence the core issue is not femininity/masculinity but the suppressed freedom of identity.
"He calls any project that incarnates transcendence a ‘masculine protest’; when a girl climbs trees, it is, according to him, to be the equal of boys: he does not imagine that she likes to climb trees; for the mother, the child is anything but a ‘penis substitute” (pg. 84)
It ultimately comes down to ulterior motives in asking; why does this person exist? Are they a love interest? Do they progress the story? Are they eye candy? Or do they exist just because? Contrary to Satre’s atheistic existentialism, a creator DOES exist in art, so we have the upmost responsibility to think about what we project onto it.
DeBeauvoir says non-binaries are angels so that’s pretty neat.