Playing with Fire: Trouble in Super Macho World? - Gonzalo Frasca
The problem here are not the emotional powers. The problem is that a game always offers a limited amount of actions. Real humans can perform thousands of different things but game characters generally only get a very limited few. A game character is defined not just by the way it looks, but also by the way it acts. Mario would certainly be a different character if he was able, say, to perform Mortal Kombat-style “fatalities”. Similarly, Sonic is defined not just by his cool looks but mainly because he can run really fast. The repertoire of actions available to a game character is a crucial dimension of his or her personality. This behavioral framing is a characteristic that only appears in games. In stories, characters are defined for what they do in the story but not by what the player can do with them. However, what stories and games do have in common is the fact that characters also get defined through their looks. Sadly, Super Princess Peach does not excel in that department either. If you happened to doubt that her emotional superpowers are sexist, just take a good look at the character herself. For crying out loud, she is a blonde princess who dresses in pink! Super Princess Peach delivers a lesson in game rhetoric on how to define a character both through its looks and its playable behaviors. Certainly, it accomplishes this by drawing on gender stereotypes. But if you look past the sexism, you will find a very clear example of how a game character can be shaped not just from its visual elements but also through gameplay rules.
Given the limited amount of gameplay actions that can be included in a game, video game characters are always bound to be limited and cartoony. This is particularly true in action games. Other genres, such as adventures or RPGs offer a broader set of actions and they arguably allow for richer characters. Games are, by definition, an abstracted, simplified version of whatever they simulate. What is important here is not the limitation itself but being aware of its existence. Game actions should not be selected solely on the basis of gameplay but also taking into account that game characters are defined by the actions they can perform. Super Princess Peach is crafted solely through her emotions and her cute pink dress. I am not necessarily suggesting that Peach should go join Lara Croft’s women liberation army, burn her bra and buy an M-16. But at the very least, Peach should be allowed to have some fun without being portrayed as a mood swinger. On an incidental note, I would like to mention that a few months after Super Princess Peach was released, Nintendo launched another Mario platform game for the Nintendo DS: New Super Mario Bros. This game featured new superpowers for Mario, too. Rather than using his emotions, Mario was able to shift sizes, from tiny to enormous. I never thought about this until I wrote this article but Nintendo’s choice of female and male superpowers for both games in nothing short of hilarious. One game defines women as emotionally unstable while the other one presents boys as being obsessed with their size. Why is Mario so worried about how big he can be? Who is he trying to impress? Has Luigi been recently dating somebody? Are the mushrooms an aphrodisiac? What is Yoshi’s gender? I always thought Yoshi was male but he lays eggs. As you can see, sex in the Mario world can be quite a complex topic. That is why Nintendo should try not to oversimplify it with stereotypes.
|
