Politics 31 May 2012 I love you video games, so why do you keep doing this? Sexy, sexy sexism in the <i>Hitman: Absolution</i> trailer. Print HTML Gamers get really, really angry when you characterise them as mouth-breathing adolescent boys who’ve never kissed a real-life girl. And rightly so: according to Jane McGonigal, one in four gamers is over 50, and 40 per cent are women. Three of the big games of last winter – Gears of War 3, Uncharted 3 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution – were written by women. And then along comes something like this. I don't mind the Hitman games, although they've come in for a lot of flak in the past for their high levels of violence (remember, only 5 per cent of games get an 18 rating). But it now seems that 12 years after the start of the franchise, it's not just Agent 47 who's looking tired. The new trailer for Hitman: Absolution, released this week, could be used as a teaching aid if anyone were to give a class on "Boring, Lazy, Stereotypes about Women in Video Games" (it would be a very long class). The plot of the trailer, such as it is, runs like this. Hitman is hiding out in a motel. The world's least successfully disguised troupe of assassins come for him and he vanquishes them with his chiselled, yet emotionally repressed, combat moves. First, there's the whole nun thing. Is this Grand Theft Auto: Ann Summers? Surely the whole point of being a troupe of deadly assassins is that you blend in with your surroundings? You wouldn't catch Ezio Auditore prancing round medieval Italy in a gimp suit. Do these women specialise in contract killings on hen nights? Then there's the shot selection. Chapter 2 in my mythical games class on this trailer would be headed "The Male Gaze". I could have storyboarded this trailer just from the words "sexy nuns". So, first shot: Nuns. Second shot: Suggestion that these AREN'T REAL NUNS, GUYS. (Done by showing a close-up of a very, very high heeled boot. Because, you know, assassins never worry about practicality over style.) Third shot: taking off the nun robes. Fourth shot: what I am going to christen Walking Bottom. There it is, at 42 seconds, the absolutely cast-iron signifier of a game developer working one-handed. If I had a pound for every game I've seen where the female characters walks in, and the camera follows her gently wobbling buttocks into shot, rather than her face, I'd have at least 23 quid. Maybe 24. From then on, it's all squeaky pleather and violent shooting, as the Hitman despatches the flock of faux-nuns. Did you know it was possible to die in a sexy way? These ladies try their hardest. By the end of the trailer, I was feeling utterly depressed that once again the games industry was perpetuating the idea that men are doers, and women are for looking pretty. The only thing that cheered me up was imagining how this trailer would look with the genders reversed. Seriously, try to imagine it. Then you'll realise how ridiculous this sort of thing is. › Expressing half-truths Walking Bottom: Please stop doing this shot, videogame developers. Helen Lewis is deputy editor of the New Statesman. She has presented BBC Radio 4’s Week in Westminster and is a regular panellist on BBC1’s Sunday Politics. More Related articles Salman Rushdie: how Cervantes and Shakespeare wrote the modern literary rule book Joan Collins shot me an anxious look and demanded: “Tell me what to say” Why do white working class people turn to the far right?
Show Hide image Observations 9 April 2016 Joan Collins shot me an anxious look and demanded: “Tell me what to say” It hadn’t dawned on me that some actors expect their every public utterance to be scripted, and I felt a strange wave of sympathy. Print HTML On a crisp spring morning in 1999, I was outside the Park Lane Hotel in Piccadilly waiting for a limousine. The Empire film awards were just beginning. Kate Winslet was safely inside, as were Bob Hoskins, Guy Ritchie and Spike Lee. All we needed to get the paparazzi going full speed was Joan Collins, still riding high as a vengeful tycoon-wife in the TV series Dynasty. And here she came, a slash of crimson lipstick, shimmering from the kerbside in her silver-grey suit and white leather gloves. My job as her chaperone was to point her at cameras, watch her prod a medallion of pork in a medley of seasonal vegetables and loudly applaud any onstage pronouncements. I soon realised that she had two main operational gears: perfectly charming with fellow celebrities, clipped and impatient with her lowly aide. A cheery wave for Ritchie, a sunny smile for Spike, a hissed aside for me – “Where’s the table? I need to sit down.” A hug for Kate, a pose with Hoskins, a cold communication for the humble minder – “I said still water, not sparkling.” But as speech-time approached, the ice started to melt. She turned the menu over, took out a pen and shot me an anxious look. “Tell me what to say.” “Why don’t you say, I don’t know, that it’s great to be here, thanks for asking me . . .” “It’s great to be here. Thanks for asking me . . .” she was writing down every word. “Here we are, witnessing the glorious rebirth of the great British film industry . . .” Scribble, scribble. It hadn’t dawned on me that some actors expect their every public utterance to be scripted, and I felt a strange wave of sympathy. Beneath this carapace of control was a tangle of insecurity, a desperation to do the right thing, and she flipped between the two, one minute poised and all-powerful, the next needy and suggestible. Still, I was on a roll. I took another gulp of the head-splitting Chardonnay. I could get away with anything here! “And I’d like to thank Empire magazine for its part in . . .” Pen down, a dark look. “I’m not just taking dictation.” Post-speech she was back to her high-handed old self but then suddenly softened at the mention of goodie-bags, unable to hide that desire in all of us to get something for free. There was only one left and it had been looted badly. Even the hand cream was gone. And the boutique discount card and the box of pink and purple macaroons. I handed her the tattered receptacle containing a Titanic soundtrack CD, a miniature of vodka, a book of high-end matches and a baseball cap bearing the legend “stevenspielberg.com”. She took it briskly, winced, gave a watery smile and was gone. This article first appeared in the 08 April 2016 issue of the New Statesman, The Tories at war More Related articles Salman Rushdie: how Cervantes and Shakespeare wrote the modern literary rule book Why do white working class people turn to the far right? As the plane descends, I'm reminded that humanity won’t always rule this patchwork land
