#to have guys dressing up as sexualized caricatures of ultra feminity

[ofwhimsicaldreams]

some thoughts on the opening ceremony now that i slept on it:

it was slightly too long, and there were moments that were really meant as fillers. not good.

i hope none of the athletes will catch a cold, with all the rain that poured down on paris yesterday...

gojira was the best musical segment <3 it was so cool!! and i am so happy to see the french metal scene being represented like that, considering how thriving it is.

the drag queens were the worst part by far. terribly vulgar (but that's part of the requirements), sexual, and "dancing" (if it can be called like that) nearby children. i don't know who at the cojo thought it would be a good idea to have them onboard but they were terribly wrong. so bad.

the masked flamme-bearer was terribly cool though. the parkour through paris! that was so nice.

most of the musical segments left me pretty cold tbh, but there is a reason why i don't like to french music (which is that i don't like what's offered, apart from the punk/metal scene).

the french cancan was ridiculous, and, worst, out of rhythm. cringe.

you know what else was cringe? the throuple. boring, too.

it was nice to see the focus on notre-dame and the artisans of haute couture (even though it did feel a bit like an ad for lvmh, but as they're sponsoring...)

i didn't care for most of the (break)dancing either, but w/e

the minions were a choice, but then again, w/e

very nice to have opera singers!!! especially the one who sang la marseillaise wrapped in the national flag. that was utterly cool. loved it. (came second in my personal ranking, after gojira)

the ride on the metal horse on la seine was so metal (ahah) cool too. with the archives images of the previous olympics, it was really nice. it was as if a ride through time, as the personification of the olympic games. very cool. i've seen people on twitter saying it was the four horsemen of the apocalypse, which is one way of seeing things, but with the commentary on the france tv direct, i didn't see it at all. nevermind.

tony estanguet gave a very nice speech.

the final relay of the flamme between all the french athletes was so cool!!! i was a bit emotional by then, especially when they light up the vasque. lovely moment. that felt more dedicated to france than some of the "tableaux" of earlier that were more about clichés (the french cancan for example) or to "provoke" (the drag queens. seriously. why???)

céline dion being able to sing was a very nice touch. more moving for her than for me (covering edith piaf on the eiffel tower, like, honestly, cliché... again) but it's a sign her treatment is working, which is a very good thing for the people suffering from the same illness as she is. very nice.

la vasque being in a hot air balloon for the whole duration of the games is a pretty nice touch too.

overall it was better than i thought it would be, but there were some very cringe moments anyway. too much focus on the clichés associated to paris/la france overall as well.

[killscreencinema]

Bayonetta (Wii U)

A couple of years ago, YouTuber Anita Sarkeesian came under fire for making the bold claim that... well... some video games can be pretty sexist ya’ll. When I say “came under fire”, I mean she was vilified, harassed, and made into the enemy of all gaming by boy with serious issues with women having the temerity to dare criticize their favorite hobby. 

I mean, I get it - it’s no fun to have some buzzkill lady, whom you assume knows nothing about gaming (the default presumption of fanboys of any ilk), come along and point out that the thing you passionately love has serious flaws.  How dare they!?  We’ve all been raised watching Jessie Spano on Saved by the Bell, a feminist caricature at best written by 50-year-old white dudes who wrote every line of hers with sneering mockery, constantly accuse every activity around her as “sexist” with no real conception of what that word even means.  Like “racist”, or any “ist” or “ism” word, “sexist” has been so overused, and therefore wrung dry of its gravitas, that it’s become almost a joke, which is a shame because it does exist, especially in the world of video games.

To put it simply, I believe some of us have been “programmed” by “The Media” (oohhhh) to respond to accusations of things like sexism with: “Oh calm down, Jessie Spano! Fuck off to Las Vegas to be dancer and have a ludicrous sex scene with Kyle MacLachlan in a swimming pool!”  Which is unfortunate, because as we are now learning, there are quite a lot of serious sexism issues that deserve more than brisk dismissals. 

I don’t bring this up because I want to go on a Feminist diatribe, something I’m woefully unqualified to do (although I know who Margaret Sanger is, so that gives me some cred, right?), not because I’m a man, but because I’m me - a guy who tries his best to respect women, but could probably always stand to do better.

The reason I bring this up is because while I played through Bayonetta, I kept wondering, “Is this a positive female protagonist in gaming?”  Scantily clad women is hardly a new feature in games, but often, their clothing, or lack-thereof, is usually never acknowledged or even a part of their character - it’s pure fan service.  I mean... what kind of Interpol agent dresses like Chun-Li?  Mai Shiranui’s outfit in the Fatal Fury and King of Fighters games increasingly pushed the boundaries of good taste as either her boobs got bigger or her costume got smaller. 

There is something refreshingly brazen and confident in how Bayonetta proudly embraces, even celebrates, her sexuality.  In fact, the creator of Bayonetta, Hideki Kamiya, was convinced that the character wouldn’t work without a “woman’s touch” and so partnered up with an artist named Mira Shimizaki to develop her fashionable look (which you can read further here).  

Also context (a word that unfortunately seems to become less, and less relevant to social debate) is key as well.  Bayonetta, published by Sega in 2009, is brawling game, in the style of Devil May Cry, and follows the titular character, who is a witch that was locked away for hundreds of years until the present day.  Bayonetta doesn’t remember her past, or why she was sealed away, but she does remember her duty as an “Umbran Witch”, such as hunting down angels, which in the world of the game, are malevolent creatures no better than demons.

In fact, for the past 20 years that Bayonetta had been released from confinement, she had been making a sweet living hunting angels and trading their halos to the minions of “Inferno” for money.  However, the game begins at the point where she stumbles on a clue to her past, as related to a mysterious magical jewel she wears on her chest, and leads her to the fictional city of Vigrid to investigate.

The tone of the game from beginning to end is unapologetic, ultra-stylish, campy action schlock and man it is GLORIOUS.  This is a large part of what makes Bayonetta’s over-the-top sexiness palatable - that, and the fact that she’s just such a cool character.  Hellena Taylor, the British voice actress for Bayonetta, imbues the character with a haughty sophistication that’s reminiscent of Lara Croft.  Meanwhile, Bayonetta’s superb character animations, from the way she calmly struts while firing a gun, to her dances which activates her ultimate attacks (called Climax Attacks), greatly assist in developing the character into a sassy, sexy, absolute badass. 

As mentioned before, the game plays like Devil May Cry, with Bayonetta being capable of using melee or projectile combos at a breakneck pace.  The variety of combos you can learn with each weapon is overwhelming and usually amounts to button-mashing your way through most battles.  Then again, considering that I won the “Stone Award” for each level (which is the worst trophy you can earn), you don’t want to take my word for it. 

The game does a great job of not getting too repetitive and changing things up so that some levels you’re engaged in a crazy motorcycle chase while in another level you’re riding a goddamn missile and blasting away enemies like it’s Space Harrier.  There are a lot of quicktime events, which can be irritating, especially when failure means instant death.  These can happen so quickly, sometimes RIGHT after a cut scene, that the unwary might often be blindsided by them.  Speaking of being blindsided, my biggest complaint about that game is the terrible camera angles.  Very frequently the camera will position itself at an awkward angle for battle, sometimes obscuring the battle scene entirely.  Even more annoying is how enemies will attack you from off-camera, either with projectiles or physically, and you might not have even known they were there until you’ve been hit. 

Other than that, my complaints are few.  Yes, several assets and locations are way too overused.  Yes, the song “Fly Me to the Moon” is played so often, I now frequently wake up in the morning singing it.  None of these complaints should deter you from playing this game though. Bayonetta is not only fun as hell (or Inferno), but practically bursts at the seams with character and style.  Whatever one might think of her character as it relates to feminism, or the portrayal of women in games, she makes quite the impression and I believe there’s room for her in a pop culture zeitgeist full of female characters who aren’t fit to kiss Bayonetta’s gun shoes.