The Victimization of Lara Croft
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"Psychotherapy"
By Safka Melanie
tune: "Battle Hymn of the Republic"
Oh mine eyes have seen the glory of the theories of Freud,
He has taught me all the evils that my ego must avoid.
Repression of the impulses resuling paranoid
As the id goes marching on.
Glory glory psychotherapy, glory glory sexuality,
Glory glory now we can be free as the id goes marching on
There was a man who thought his friends to him were all superior
And this complex he imagined made life drearier and drearier
Till his analyst assured him that he really was inferior
As the id goes marching on.
Glory glory psychotherapy, glory glory sexuality,
Glory glory now we can be free as the id goes marching on
Do you drown your superego in a flood of alcohol - or something else -
And go running after women till you're just about to fall.
You may think you're having fun but you're not having fun at all
As the id goes marching on.
Glory glory psychotherapy, glory glory sexuality,
Glory glory now we can be free as the id goes marching on
Oh sad is the masochism, the vagaries of sex
Have turned half the population into total nervous wrecks.
But your analyst will cure you, long as you can pay the cheques
As the id goes marching on.
Glory glory psychotherapy, glory glory sexuality,
Glory glory now we can be free as the id goes marching on
Is your body plagued by aches and pains that you can't understand
Compound fractures ingrown toenails, floating kidneys, trembling hands,
There's a secret to your trouble: you're in love with your old man
As the id goes marching on.
Glory glory psychotherapy, glory glory sexuality,
Glory glory now we can be free as the id goes marching on
Freud's mystic world of meaning needn't have us mystified
It's really very simple what the psyche tries to hide:
A thing is a phallic symbol if it's longer than it's wide
As the id goes marching on.
Glory glory psychotherapy, glory glory sexuality,
Glory glory now we can be free as the id goes marching on.
I don't think many psychologists take Freud's theories seriously anymore.
The sword as a phallic symbol is so disingenuous it's amazing.
It's bears only the most superficial resemblance to a phallus, and its use by males throughout history is a matter of practicability, not design. It's not as if men were just sitting around one day and decided "You know what, we need something with an incredibly vague resemblance to our phallus's to kill people with."
The sword is a tool of murder, and it and other blades are designed the way they are as a matter of effectiveness--concentrating the force of a swing into a narrow point in order to cut more easily. I've never understood how it could be seriously taken for a phallic symbol.
defcon6000
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No, they don't. You might find a few therapists who're influenced by Freud's dream theory, who think certain objects in a dream are symbolic of something. Like if you dream about climbing a tree to reach for some fruit, but you fail, it's supposed to represent you striving--maybe in a career or a relationship--but you're hitting a wall. As you can tell, it's a lot of educated guessing.
Anyway...
Many still follow Freud's theories, but most (like me) try to use them as a set of tools and guidelines rather than literal, narrow set-on-rock methods. For example, dream interpretation is about studying how a person's dream connects to his (hers) current personal situation, a theory that is often misinterpreted as a dream dictionary that applies to all (Bird = Insecurity, Tree = House, etc).
Like many other sciences devoted to health, the only ones that refuse to change their obsolete methods are the old losers nobody listens to anymore.
Wouldn't that apply to most people's bodies?
Like many other sciences devoted to health, the only ones that refuse to change their obsolete methods are the old losers nobody listens to anymore.
Wouldn't that apply to most people's bodies?
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Yeah, I got that. On any case, could the females of this thread give a few examples of positive women in the media? One of my protagonists is a girl, so I really want to make her a solid and positive role model.
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I think there's a thread on favourite female game characters that could probably be gently derailed towards favourite female characters in general.
I just don't want to give poor Clockwork an aneurysm after the mess of a thread we've given them so far.
I just don't want to give poor Clockwork an aneurysm after the mess of a thread we've given them so far.
Kaiser-Kun, I recently got a very good bit of advice about writing accurate female characters: Just write a character with likes and dislikes, wants and needs, the same as you would any character of any gender, race, species, or creed. That's it.
If you want to avoid trope-ing things up, don't make her a cardboard cutout or stereotype. If you do want to trope (and there are good reasons to do so, sometimes!), do it deliberately, try to do it justice, and STILL try not to make her a cardboard cutout or stereotype, because that'll just make her predictable.
Incidentally, this also works for women wanting to write male characters.
If you want to avoid trope-ing things up, don't make her a cardboard cutout or stereotype. If you do want to trope (and there are good reasons to do so, sometimes!), do it deliberately, try to do it justice, and STILL try not to make her a cardboard cutout or stereotype, because that'll just make her predictable.
Incidentally, this also works for women wanting to write male characters.
Catching up from where the thread resumed, so this is probably longer and more annoying a post than it should be...
It always strikes me as strange when people use Aeryn Sun as an example of a non-sexualized character - her first act in the series is to (literally) sit on Crichton's face. Not as obvious as Chiana's characterization - which seems to be included for as much fanservice as possible (the scene in which Zhaan disrobes isn't, strangely, a sexual scene so much as a display of the differences between her and the rest of the characters).
I don't have it to hand (the one time I actually need the bloody book, and it isn't within reaching distance), but The Nitpickers Guide said something very similar, then tore into the franchise - I see no problem in proclaiming an affection for something and being utterly disappointed in it. There are numerous (and deep-rooted) problems in most of the Trek franchise... I can't be the only person who noticed the camera (especially in the first couple of seasons) lingering on Troi's breasts and ass for a considerable amount of time, even when other characters were talking.
FWIW, this is something people have been struggling with since the conventions in the sixties - people hated Nurse Chapel, but everyone loved Majel without question. The "less than fully fledged human beings" in the entire spectrum of SF and fantasy is probably a hang-over from the pulps, and the representations in some of the more visible series.
Of course Jadzia is sexual. Hell, Picard in the tight uniform is a sexualized image. (massive derail potential while talking about Star Trek, but the one thing I liked from the first season of TNG was the guys in mini skirts - it made sense that people had outgrown their hang-ups about what clothes were appropriate for each gender)
I'm tempted to bring up The Rock fondling the BFG in the film adaptation of Doom...
It always strikes me as strange when people use Aeryn Sun as an example of a non-sexualized character - her first act in the series is to (literally) sit on Crichton's face. Not as obvious as Chiana's characterization - which seems to be included for as much fanservice as possible (the scene in which Zhaan disrobes isn't, strangely, a sexual scene so much as a display of the differences between her and the rest of the characters).
I don't have it to hand (the one time I actually need the bloody book, and it isn't within reaching distance), but The Nitpickers Guide said something very similar, then tore into the franchise - I see no problem in proclaiming an affection for something and being utterly disappointed in it. There are numerous (and deep-rooted) problems in most of the Trek franchise... I can't be the only person who noticed the camera (especially in the first couple of seasons) lingering on Troi's breasts and ass for a considerable amount of time, even when other characters were talking.
FWIW, this is something people have been struggling with since the conventions in the sixties - people hated Nurse Chapel, but everyone loved Majel without question. The "less than fully fledged human beings" in the entire spectrum of SF and fantasy is probably a hang-over from the pulps, and the representations in some of the more visible series.
Of course Jadzia is sexual. Hell, Picard in the tight uniform is a sexualized image. (massive derail potential while talking about Star Trek, but the one thing I liked from the first season of TNG was the guys in mini skirts - it made sense that people had outgrown their hang-ups about what clothes were appropriate for each gender)
I'm tempted to bring up The Rock fondling the BFG in the film adaptation of Doom...
maybe we should start another thread of positive female characters? try watching the other videos on feministfrequency.com she goes over a lot of characters good and bad.
just try to avoid making them too perfect. in an attempt to not make the ladies who read it mad I think some writers make their female beautiful, smart, athletic, and incapable of acting human lol.
If someone does start a thread about this let me know
defcon6000
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Hmm, you must run with a different bunch than I do, 'cause I know very, very few psychologists who take anything Freud says seriously.
There's the one camp who says dreams mean something, then the other (and this is the one I follow) who says dreams are hoopla, random neurons firing while your brain organizes information. There's a reason why your body goes into paralysis when you enter REM, 'cause all those signals being sent off. You'd probably be spazzing in your sleep.
There's also been studies where people performed better on tests, after learning the information the previous day, when they had a full night's rest, compared to those who had their REM stage interrupted--and before you ask, yes, both groups had the exact same hours of sleep.
So I guess I find it hard to believe that there are symbols or deeper messages in the random firing of neurons.
There comes a point where I think we like to read into, or project, what we want to see in images or texts. Perhaps to suit our schema, or perhaps, like in Zoombie's case, people are bored and just want to point out dicks. (There's some yahoo on Youtube who goes through Disney cartoons and points out how many times the word 'sex' appears.)
Also, little known fact: Freud was never a psychologist. He was a trained a physician who noticed some of his patients' aliments were not physical. From there, he based his theories on upper class, sexually repressed, women. Not to put down the guy, but he really didn't know what he was talking about.
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I dunno, I'm not going to say whether dreams can be interpreted the way some people claim, but mine definitely aren't entirely random.
The subject of my dreams changes depending on what anxieties and other issues I'm dealing with at any one time. When I was a kid getting bullied, and for a couple years after leaving school while I was still processing what I'd gone through, any time I had a bad day or felt vulnerable I'd have dreams about being naked in class, or dreams about kids from school being in my house and refusing to leave, or this one dream I had while my dog was getting sick as she got older and I was still dealing with bullying, where I dreamed I looked under my bed and saw my dog's legs hanging down from the mattress and knew she was dead, and when I turned around the bullies I knew were laughing about it. I'm having trouble paying the rent in full right now, and have some old debts that are on hold while I look for work, and whenever I get a reminder of one of them I dream of living in an abandoned house down the road and trying not to get caught for living in it.
My mum met my dad when she was 18 and he died when she was 25. I met my other half when I was 18, and the whole year I was 25 I had dreams about him disappearing, or dying, or just not being around any more because we'd broken up and I never knew why, or him never having been real and me having imagined him. I never had dreams like that before then, and they stopped shortly after I talked to him about it.
My other half has an artificial bladder, and he dreams of a continuous adventure to find the toilet if his bladder fills up during the night, complete with constantly interrupted attempts to pee if he does find one in-dream.
The subject of my dreams changes depending on what anxieties and other issues I'm dealing with at any one time. When I was a kid getting bullied, and for a couple years after leaving school while I was still processing what I'd gone through, any time I had a bad day or felt vulnerable I'd have dreams about being naked in class, or dreams about kids from school being in my house and refusing to leave, or this one dream I had while my dog was getting sick as she got older and I was still dealing with bullying, where I dreamed I looked under my bed and saw my dog's legs hanging down from the mattress and knew she was dead, and when I turned around the bullies I knew were laughing about it. I'm having trouble paying the rent in full right now, and have some old debts that are on hold while I look for work, and whenever I get a reminder of one of them I dream of living in an abandoned house down the road and trying not to get caught for living in it.
My mum met my dad when she was 18 and he died when she was 25. I met my other half when I was 18, and the whole year I was 25 I had dreams about him disappearing, or dying, or just not being around any more because we'd broken up and I never knew why, or him never having been real and me having imagined him. I never had dreams like that before then, and they stopped shortly after I talked to him about it.
My other half has an artificial bladder, and he dreams of a continuous adventure to find the toilet if his bladder fills up during the night, complete with constantly interrupted attempts to pee if he does find one in-dream.
What theories do the psychologists you know follow? I ask because most of those who share the ideas you describe are psychiatrists, not psychologists. Most of my colleagues and myself are psychoanalists, which means we follow Freud's theories, and altough I think most of them are quite dated, the roots of it are true: what happens is secondary to how the patient feels about it.
For example, the theory of dream interpretation not only means trying to find a meaning to the dream, but also questioning the patient about why did s/he gave it that precise meaning. The fact that dreams could be random is entirely irrelevant.
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I know this thread kinda derailed and went quiet, but I just came across an article that explains my thoughts on the Lara Croft thing pretty well. They key point for me is the juxtaposition between the trailer they showed for this game in 2011, and the trailer that was shown at E3 in 2012.
In the first trailer, you've got a real origin story - you can see she gets broken down and that she's going to struggle, but she feels strong, active and determined. The key phrase at the end of the trailer uses the word "survivor", and that's exactly how she's portrayed. As someone beating the odds to survive. It feels like the Batman Begins movie, where Bruce Wayne loses everything but comes back fighting. It makes me excited for the reboot.
In contrast, the most recent trailer puts all the emphasis on her pain, her fear, her asking for help from others, and has an almost torture-porn aesthetic that reminds me more of Hostel than it does of Batman Begins. She doesn't speak directly to the viewer, and the only things we do hear her saying are requests for help, almost orgasmic cried of pain and a tearful apology to a dead deer. The sexual assault is marked as a catalyst for transforming her from a character whose weakness and vulnerability is emphasised to one who can fight back, whereas in the original trailer the struggle was still real, but the core strength of her character was there from the beginning, informing her actions.
I think that's it for me. Both trailers show a character's genesis, both show beating the odds and survival, but one focuses on the character as a survivor, and the other on the character as a victim.
In the first trailer, you've got a real origin story - you can see she gets broken down and that she's going to struggle, but she feels strong, active and determined. The key phrase at the end of the trailer uses the word "survivor", and that's exactly how she's portrayed. As someone beating the odds to survive. It feels like the Batman Begins movie, where Bruce Wayne loses everything but comes back fighting. It makes me excited for the reboot.
In contrast, the most recent trailer puts all the emphasis on her pain, her fear, her asking for help from others, and has an almost torture-porn aesthetic that reminds me more of Hostel than it does of Batman Begins. She doesn't speak directly to the viewer, and the only things we do hear her saying are requests for help, almost orgasmic cried of pain and a tearful apology to a dead deer. The sexual assault is marked as a catalyst for transforming her from a character whose weakness and vulnerability is emphasised to one who can fight back, whereas in the original trailer the struggle was still real, but the core strength of her character was there from the beginning, informing her actions.
I think that's it for me. Both trailers show a character's genesis, both show beating the odds and survival, but one focuses on the character as a survivor, and the other on the character as a victim.
RichardGarfinkle
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I think you've found the critical point in this. The idea of the character forged by working to survive and learning to overcome the world and its dangers is very much a hero's story.
But the crux of such a tale is the active character of the character. They do the forging, they grab the dangers and transform them into opportunity and action.
The torture-porn aspect focuses on the suffering they undergo not the actions they take.
There's also a weaselish trick in the idea that because she ends up triumphant it really was a heroic tale. But a little triumph after a lot of torture porn is like the old bit where porn makers would put a little social commentary in their movies to beat the "without redeeming social value" test.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/obscenity
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Cracked just posted an article about the 14 Worst Boobs in the History of Video Games.
I guess the designer's only reference back then for a female torso was their mother's pointy bra.
I guess the designer's only reference back then for a female torso was their mother's pointy bra.
My problem with Hostel 2 was with how it gloated over the violence, so I'm not the biggest fan of the gorn genre... Strangely, I had no problem watching the guys in the first film being tortured (mostly because none of them were in the least likable, but that's probably something to be discussed elsewhere).
I had forgotten all about BloodRayne. That, more than the Custer game, or the annoying (and completely pointless) ads which ran in a few magazines of a naked Jo Guest advertising games, is one of those "games are for boys" moments which never should have happened had people with a tiny bit of common sense been involved in the process. It was difficult enough to convince some of my female friends about the games which they should be playing, but when they went and looked at the articles about the games and came across that stuff...
It's like watching an industry go out of its' way to collapse. Again.
I find it weird that after all this time the video game medium in general ("exceptions" noted) can't seem to consistently get out of its own way in regard to its relationship with female gamers. If nothing else, it's just lousy business. Every medium of entertainment has its controversies and self-made pitfalls, but I can't think of another in the 21st Century that completely screws up its relationship with an enormous potential customer base. Particularly one as valuable as the female fan base.
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Yes.
Yorkist posted a link on another thread to the blog Girls Read Comics (just archives now) and I find a lot of her points still sting.
Like this from two years ago:
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Hi kids! Good to see you!
I think the modern critics should read some of Asimov's stuff and see how far female characters have come since Pebble in the Sky. It's fun to read those novels, and amusing to see the perspective on women as it was in that time.
I think the modern critics should read some of Asimov's stuff and see how far female characters have come since Pebble in the Sky. It's fun to read those novels, and amusing to see the perspective on women as it was in that time.
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