Did you watch the Spike VGAs over the weekend? Quite a spectacle -- Jack Black in his underwear wielding a flamethrower, Tim-Freaking-Schafer making an entrance in a carriage, and various women painted entirely silver and fashioned like bizarre robot angels."The Spike VGAs are embarrassing" is not a new refrain, of course. And to be fair, the display debacle makes a little bit of sense. Games are still young. We need the special effects, the shenanigans and the scantily-clad broads (and comedians), presumably to draw attention to the space and maintain user interest. MTV's Video Music Awards are another example of this tactic -- after all, everyone knows nobody really watches, anymore, what few videos are actually still extant. People tune into that show to see Britney disasters or find out which chicks are going to kiss.
And I'm often accused of taking myself too seriously, so I'm not sure if I have my head up my ass here, but the entire thing was pretty horrifying. Those who follow my work know I have never in my life taken the "I'm A Woman And I Play Video Games" stance, nor do I ever want to. So if I feel that the show was distastefully exclusionary and -- okay, okay, I'm finally going to say it -- misogynist, there's probably something grievously wrong with it.
And, you know, I tend to only call sexism when something is offensive to women while glorifying men -- but all the show really glorified was that it's awesome to be a chubby nerd in your underwear. How do you guys feel about being portrayed that way?
The opening musical features Jack Black warring on videogames' behalf against the demons of reading, exercise and romance. Wait, don't we live in an age where we'd like to believe that those things are not mutually exclusive? Oh, I see, that was supposed to be the point of the performance (I felt a wash of sympathy for Black, actually). You learn things from games, Wii Fit helps you play actively, and Xbox Live is a wholly viable avenue for modern social interaction. Hey, screw the concept of games being only one entertainment component of a balanced, healthy life. Let's just allow them to account for all our basic functions!
[I'm sure it's not his fault that these monkey statues are so ugly]Still, head-out-of-ass, that all would have been fine if not for the assertion (and I'm paraphrasing) that you should just "make" your girlfriend play on Live with you if she wants your attention, and that the ancillary merit of Wii Fit is that it can make your girlfriend look like Wii Fit Girl, who did indeed, at the appropriate point in the performance, make a stripe-bottomed, butt-swiveling appearance (though, not being especially a connoisseur of Wii Fit Girl, I can't say whether it was truly her or a dancer styled in her image).
I'm going to say something a little difficult here: I don't think that highlighting female sex appeal -- okay, wait, no, I'm just gonna come out and say it -- I don't think that objectifying women is always sexist. Kim Kardashian is consciously and electively working her brand image when she emerges with cleavage abundant to say, of Dante's Inferno, "It is based on a book. Hee!"
The female body is practically an art object, so I didn't even mind the trotting-out of vacant Marisa Miller or the gyrating argentine archangels (who may or may not have been Argentines). Like the subject heading says, I wasn't sure whether to be horrified at the gaudy display, or jealous that I wasn't there. Everyone looked wonderfully drunk, which might have been a fun way to block out the pain and be less anxious about all the aggressively hot women.
What horrified me was not so much the tackiness of these individual moments. I mean, let's be ostentatious, let's have fun, let's throw a grand flame-throwing fucking spectacle -- but it's the fact that they seemed to be representative of a prevailing 1997 kind of attitude that I thought we were way, way over. And allowing these attitudes to be a visible TV representative of who we are isn't just backward, it's probably destructive.
As I've been saying to friends, I feel we're at least ten years away from the day when we can have a respectable, Versace-gowned and Golden Globes-ish presentation on the worthiest artists and dignitaries among us. And who knows? That day may never come (but if it does, I call dibs on the Valentino). At the very least, the majority of the industry and its fans has widely accepted that the stereotypes of our past are applicable only to a tiny minority. We've relinquished that crap because it holds us back.
We've rejected it because it alienates people -- so why drag it out again at an event whose cranked hyperbole is geared at broadening awareness and increasing appeal? Who in the world still thinks they speak for all of us? Why does the industry participate in this?
...And as a footnote, GTA IV? Seriously?
Oh, and as a second footnote, David Jaffe wants you to know that those God Of War III sneak peeks looked like crap compared to what he's seen, due to the inadequate resolution of the VGA's screen.
