Month: March 2013

Caroline, GLaDOS, and Gender in Portal

Alex Heberling

bahahahorel:

So, did someone say Portal and feminism?

I’m neither intellectual enough to write this academically nor creative enough to relate this in a fic, so here is some semi-organized brainspawn.

For the purposes of this post, if I refer to men as group disparagingly I’m talking about them as extensions and symbolic representations of the patriarchy, not as individuals. I don’t hate men.

Also, I do not agree with the tenets of second wave feminism. While my history of feminism 101 course was a formative part of my youth, I’ve since learned much about feminism that I try to apply to my own politics and opinions. So, connecting Portal to second wave feminism is not a wholesale endorsement of it.

Caroline. She’s a white, probably middle-class woman who is in her youth in the 50’s and 60’s. She has a career that is typically gendered (secretary), and the little canon information we have about her seems to show us that she is accommodating and hardworking (“Yes, sir, Mr. Johnson!), as a woman in her position would be expected to be. But as people much more analytically inclined than I am have pointed out here, Caroline actually uses her situation to her advantage, and occupies one of Aperture Science’s most influential roles.

So  she is the perfect person with which to begin this allegory for second wave feminism.

She is not a doting housewife, but she is doing “women’s work”, and she is using her “””submissive””” position to influence the world in significant ways.

But then, suddenly, she is given power  when she is used to create GLaDOS.

In order to keep the historically oppressed women GLaDOS from starting a riot dispensing neurotoxin, the scientists (mostly represented by men in Lab Ratt and Doug’s art) hook her up to some cores.

The cores are supposed to suppress her personality by forcing her to adopt traits that are not native to her.

They ingrain these traits that are not hers into her in order to make her behave and submit. They try to shape and mold her personality into something it is not.

Let’s take a look at these cores.

There is morality core, because (white) women are supposed to be good and kind.

There is curiosity core, who is childlike because women are supposed to be childish (which feeds into paternal patriarchal feelings).

There is cake core, which literally just reads off recipes, because do I even have to explain?

And there is anger core, because women are irrational and overemotional.

The men in Caroline’s life perceive that she has power and have to stop her from using it by making her believe that she has to be these things she is not and forcing the traits on her.

Note that this power she has is now explicit overt power, rather than the power she managed to get by being close to Cave. That is the power that threatens men.

So Caroline goes from “knowing her place” as a woman to having power and threatening men, to being silenced by having a formulaic femininity thrust upon her with the cores.

And sexism cuts both ways! The cores that destroy Wheatley, that corrupt him, are traditionally “masculine” traits: macho bravado, factual rationale, and intrepid pioneerism. The expectations of masculinity destroy the “male” core.  

It isn’t a perfect metaphor. It isn’t a perfect feminist narrative. But there are definitely traces of feminism in the story and characters that are important because media matters.

This is not a definitive essay post, it is the beginning of a conversation. I haven’t even mentioned the power of having a (possibly disabled) woman of color as the hero of a game, or what it could mean that she strips GLaDOS of the expectations that the men have put on her. I haven’t matched up the dates to feminist movements. I haven’t talked about how the narrative surrounding two fully fleshed out women is feminist. But Portal is undoubtedly a feminist game.

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Alex Heberling

fuchsiamae:

Reasons why the “Portal and feminism” conversation is important

  1. Feminism is important
  2. Especially in notoriously sexist places like the gaming community
  3. As both feminist games and games that are popular and well-recognized, the Portal series is a step towards equality for female characters and female gamers

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Alex Heberling

devidsketchbook:

Extraordinary photos of young hitchhikers and freight train hoppers by Mike Brodie

Mike Brodie (tumblr | facebook) first began photographing in 2004 when he was given a Polaroid camera. Working under the moniker, The Polaroid Kidd, Brodie spent the next four years circumambulating the U.S. amassing an archive of photographs that would go on to make up one of the few, true collections of American travel photography. Having never undergone any formal training, he chose to remained untethered to the pressures and expectations of the art market.

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Alex Heberling

I am a dummy and got all caught up in Birthday Shenanigans, and thus forgot to post here on Wednesday!  The Garanos Part 3 eBook is now available.

Head on over to the store and tell your friends. :) Oh!  And use the coupon code birthday13 for 10% off through March 18th!

Volume I Release Schedule:

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Alex Heberling

bonkalore:

A while back I had some Blue Sky feels when this song came on suddenly of course and proceeded to never finish it all the way like all my other art… ;A; *sobs*

But I’m making a point to post things anyway because geez. New Years resolution I guess it is…

Yeeeeeeaaaaaaah need this on my dash.

3/16/2002

Alex Heberling

After a casual remark I heard in conversation earlier today, I’m having a little bit of a moment. Wednesday was my birthday, so naturally, I don’t often forget about this, but it had completely slipped my mind until today. After all, my anniversary is coming up.

Trigger warning past the cut: discussing suicide, depression. (Please let me know if I should tag anything else for safety.)

—–

11 years ago, three days after my 16th birthday, I attempted suicide.

I guess I was triggered? A little? I dunno, I feel like “trigger” is (or should be) a fairly sacred term that I’m not sure if I’m comfortable applying to myself. A lot of folks who have PTSD who get triggered have reactions that are a whole lot worse than I’m having this evening, so I don’t want to claim it inappropriately or disrespect people who have triggers by using it flippantly.

Anyway. Just getting some of my thoughts out there.

I don’t feel compelled to harm myself in any way right now. But since I did it so close to my birthday, I get pretty reflective in the few days following it until the day itself passes. Last year was the big ten year mark since I survived it, and I was in a pretty dark place leading up to it for various Real Life Grown-Up Problems reasons.

I was at my most depressed that I’ve been since I was 16. I was incredibly unhappy in my career and pretty much all of my relationships were kind of shaky. At the time, I was just starting up work on my reboot of The Hues, so I’d been thinking about that period of my life a whole lot and trudging up some pretty dark memories of who I was and how I felt at that time. It was making me feel pretty weird in the head.

I think that very thing is one of the factors in why I put off The Hues for so long; it would necessitate looking back at my drawings and scribbles from back then, remembering very acutely what was going on in the background of every drawing.

When I got back home tonight, I went looking through some of my old things. I kept a box of knicknacks and things from high school and found some photos of me from when I was in the musical that year. I’m smiling in them, but I remember exactly how I felt when those photos were taken, and how much pain I was in. I read my diary from back then, all the entries around the attempt, all the writing about my first loves and my dreams and the notion that I would be friends with all these people forever and ever.

In my diary, I found a photo of me with my first boyfriend, the one who would later break up with me, telling me that I only wanted a boyfriend to say that I had one, which ruined me for YEARS afterward, thinking I was asexual and undesirable, when really I was afraid of being rejected, being slut-shamed by my family the way they did my oldest sister for so many years, afraid of letting anyone see my body in any sexual way because what was WRONG with them? Why would anyone ever want someone who looked like me?

The last time I spoke to him was about four years ago, when he tried to apologize for everything. He said he considered his bumbled relationship with me to be his greatest personal failure, to which all I can say is… good. His words fucked me up for a really long time, and I can’t think about him without thinking about the worst period of my life. There is certain music I still can’t listen to because of all that.

I’ve survived a lot in 11 years. I’ve fallen in love, earned a degree, made art I’m proud of, made art I’m not so proud of, built a life with a partner I trust, lost jobs, lost a lot of sleep, and gained a lot of perspective on the way. Sometimes all that pain is dim and distant, other times it sneaks up on me and jabs me in the ribcage unexpectedly.

Chris says he often forgets that I attempted, since I was so well-adjusted and together when we first met; he never would have guessed. But it was one of the first things I told him about me, once I was certain that we were going to have a serious relationship. It’s something that most people don’t know about me.

I may have just turned 27, but tonight I felt 16 again, for just a little while. If I could go back in time and talk to myself then, I don’t know where I’d begin to tell her everything she would accomplish, but I’d just want to give her a hug and weep for her.

Every couple years, I get especially broody and reflective on this time in my life, and I’ll go poking into old IM logs and LJ entries for no good reason, reliving all the young, fluttery love and pain and angst. Tonight, it’s a little bit of much-needed catharsis, and while I don’t think that this is definitely me closing that chapter of my life once and for all, to begin a new one (because really, do we ever completely escape that kind of pain?) I do think I can tuck it back into its box to hibernate for awhile.

It gets better, but not without a lot of work.