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June 27, 2013 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
26:19
Anita Sarkeesian Doesn't Understand Words (Feminist Frequency)
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Dictionary.com defines conversation as the informal interchange of thoughts, information, etc. by spoken words or communication between persons.
We are not having a dialogue, Anita.
You are talking to us.
You mean a lecture.
Three words and two seconds in, and you've already misinterpreted the meaning of a word.
It's okay, I can forgive that.
I'm sure the rest of it will completely redeem that mistake.
A trope is a common pattern in a story or a recognizable attribute in a character that conveys information to the audience.
A trope becomes a cliché when it's overused.
Sadly, some of these tropes often perpetuate offensive stereotypes.
Anita, have you forgotten what you're trying to do?
You're trying to prove that women are being demonized and stereotyped in tropes.
If you're trying to prove something, it means you're trying to use the scientific method.
Otherwise, you just have a religion.
If you say, I'm sad by this, or I find these offensive, then I cannot trust what you have to say after that.
I automatically think that what you have to say is compromised by your inability to separate your emotions from the facts.
If you can't separate your emotions from the facts, that means your information is going to be half complete.
If your information is half complete, I cannot rely on it to use it to form my own opinion on because I already know the information is compromised.
Alright, alright, it's probably just nerves.
I'm sure it's not an endemic issue in this video.
Who remembers the 1994 issue of Green Lantern number 54, where Kyle Raynor finds that his girlfriend, Alex DeWitt, has been brutally murdered and stuffed into a fridge?
Okay, well, I've never actually read Green Lantern.
Why would you feel entitled to comment on it?
Why wouldn't you go out and read it as preparation for this video?
What kind of research do you think I will assume you have done if you say I did no research?
Alright, alright, we will assume that the person who has told you what happened has read it.
We will assume that they know what happened, they knew the and understood the nuances of the comic and what the feel and the purpose of the plot was.
The delicacy it was handled with, the emotional reaction from the man, which I'm sure was pretty intense.
He's just found his fiancée chopped up in the fridge.
Jesus fucking Christ, I would freak the fuck out.
But thankfully Gail Simone did, because she began to see a trend.
Simone was sick of seeing superheroines who have either been depowered, raped, or cut up and stuck in the refrigerator.
The problem with this is that you can't get sick of something by seeing it once.
There was, as far as you have proved, one person stuck in the refrigerator cut up.
This seems to be a strong example of bias creeping in.
However, it's not your bias, it's Gail's bias.
So I tell you what, I will not mark you down on that.
In 1999, she created a startlingly long list of over 90 comics that feature female superheroes who suffered a loss of superpowers, brutal violation, or an untimely gruesome death, most often as a plot point for the male hero to seek revenge or further his heroic journey.
She called this reoccurring pattern women in refrigerators for obvious reasons.
Since all you've done there is shown that the deep power trope, according to tvtropes.org, is applied quite evenly across the sexes.
I'm not really sure how that supports your argument, unless perhaps comic book writers were specifically targeting women with much higher frequency than any other media.
So let's assume that.
Since it was originally created, the list has continued to grow.
I'm just going to show you a few examples.
Spider-Man's first love, Gwen Stacey, was thrown off a building by the Green Goblin back in 1973.
Despite Spidey swooping in and heroically catching her before she hits the ground, she still died either from whiplash or from shock.
Unsurprisingly, the seemingly random death of a significant character dictionary.com defines random as proceeding made or occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern.
The Green Goblin captured Gwen Stacy to lure Spider-Man into a final confrontation and use her as an advantage in the fight.
There was a definitive aim and purpose there.
Ergo, her death was objectively not random.
Okay, we will just assume you're using random as a synonym or the intentional.
Outraged fans of the series.
The writers chose to kill off an important female character for the sole purpose of giving Peter Parker a more complex and interesting story arc.
Getting real tired of your shit, Anita.
What possible story arc could be more important to Peter Parker than this?
This is his first fucking love.
His arch enemy has just thrown her off a fucking bridge and instead of managing to save her life, he is the one that kills her.
The comic is about Spider-Man.
He is the protagonist.
Of course the story is about him and what he has to lose in order to grow as a character.
Because character comes from adversity.
It wasn't just because she was a woman.
It was because she was important.
Why don't you think women can be important, Anita?
I'll put this one down to low self-esteem.
We'll move on to the next point.
Fuck.
In the Batman universe, Stephanie Brown, who's played many characters such as a spoiler, a female robin, and also Batgirl, was gruesomely tortured to death with a power drill by Batman's enemy, the Black Mask.
The highly sexualized images of Brown being tortured spanned across multiple issues.
Some fans were so outraged by this fridging of Bat Girl that they referred to this as Torture Porn.
So if you don't want to push Game of Thrones, then.
Another strong female superhero who met an untimely and trivial death was Big Barda.
She was the leader of the female Furies and also a member of Birds of Prey and the Justice League.
She was married to Mr. Miracle and interestingly, she was actually physically stronger than her superhero husband.
Although Big Barda had all of these superpowers, she was killed in her kitchen with no sign of a real battle.
That's not what Trump is.
I'm sure that was a mistake, so we'll be on that.
This death wasn't inconsequential for her husband, was it?
In fact, one might suggest that, as the main character, it was quite important.
I'm just gonna find my dictionary again.
And of course, her death conveniently created a narrative for her husband.
He struggled with whether or not to use the anti-life equation, which would allow him to control the willpower of all sentient beings.
Big Barda is just one of many female characters whose random and meaningless death was constructed in order to create a more intricate storyline for a male hero.
The thing is, it's not really very convenient for the main character.
It forces them to change and not always for the better.
And part of the character's growth is overcoming the temptation to use super weapons or doomsday devices or superpowers or whatever.
And, you know, the terrible consequences that would occur.
And that's something that involves us in the story.
It's not making light of her death.
You seem to imply that these things just happen and people just say, all right, so how's the weather?
Comic books can be a little bit difficult to follow since characters are killed and then brought back to life, or there's multiple canons in different books for the same characters.
So this doesn't hold true across the board, but it certainly happens a lot.
You sound awfully accusatory about that.
Try to be neutral.
Women in Refrigerators is one way of making sense of this incredibly complex world by pulling out overarching patterns of the way women are treated in comic books.
Yes, but it's not the only way.
All that does is show you the women.
When Simone released her list in 1999, there was an instant backlash from some comic book fans who thought it was unfair that they were singling out female characters.
This criticism happens whenever we point out tropes specifically about women.
Maybe that should tell you something.
In this case, comic book fans criticized women in refrigerators by saying that male heroes get killed and tortured too, so what's the big deal?
The people who run the Women in Refrigerators website responded to this by creating another trope.
You don't create tropes, you discover them.
Which is why they end up with names like Women in Refrigerators.
They're named after the first one.
And in this case, the only one.
How much do I love fans?
Called Dead Men Defrosting.
Comic fan John Bartell explains in cases where male heroes have been altered or appear to die, they usually come back even better than before, either power-wise or in terms of character development relevancy to the reader.
Many popular superheroes fit neatly into the Dead Men Defrosting trope, such as Superman, Hal Jordan as Green Lantern, Barry Allen as the Flash, Spider-Man, Captain America, The Hulk, Nick Fury, etc., etc.
A classic example of this difference applies even when characters are depowered.
When Barbara Gordon as Batgirl was shot in the spine by the Joker as a way to drive her father, Commissioner Gordon, insane, she was permanently paralyzed and had to create an entirely new identity for herself.
But when Batman's back was broken over super villain Bane's knee, he fully recovered.
Are you shitting me?
Seriously, you're now complaining about the unfairness of it.
That the female character experienced more character growth than Batman did.
From a narrative point of view, that character has had to learn a lot more than Batman, who didn't fundamentally change from it.
I. Sorry that you're upset by that?
Simone responds to this criticism by saying, First, there's always been a larger selection of male characters, so a handful killed made barely a ripple.
Second, they didn't seem to be killed in the same way.
They tended to die heroically, to go down fighting.
Whereas in many cases, the super ladies were simply found on the kitchen table already carved up.
The writers of these comics treat similar narrative situations very differently based on the character's gender, and it seems kind of seems that that's done for the narrative impact.
Even if the young male readership of comic books are going to really relate to the main male hero, which is the whole point of reading them for the target audience.
And lo and behold, they're really concerned about something bad, really bad, happening to the beloved women in their lives.
That's a major trigger for them.
They absolutely want to know that the bad guy gets his comeuppance.
That is something that invests them in the story.
To be faring much worse for the women.
While the Women in Refrigerators trope originated in the comic book genre, it can be applied across other pop culture mediums such as video games, TV shows, and movies.
For example, Libby and Shannon on Lost were murdered specifically to push the story arc of two male characters.
Or how about all these women from Heroes who were depicted as either losing or being unable to control their power?
In video games such as God of War 1, Splinter Cell, and Fable 2, the narrative revolves around a man seeking revenge for the death of female family members.
And there are plenty, plenty more examples.
Yes, because that is what those stories are about.
Not every story can be about a woman and her problems.
Can you please let men have their own stories?
I believe that women are completely free agents.
They are perfectly capable of writing their own stories that cater to women if they choose.
And men can watch those, except they won't because they end up writing fucking twilight.
Writers are using the Women in Refrigerators trope to literally trade a female character's life for the benefit of a male character story arc.
They're making clear that women, even powerful female superheroes, are basically disposable.
It's important to remember that these comics don't exist in a vacuum, that they're created by artists and writers who live in the same sexist social systems that we all do, and that's reflected in the characters and the stories.
It's saddening to see how flippantly and trivially violence against women is treated in comic book pages.
It must be that that speech bubble is too small to read from the picture you've posted, because seriously, I was under the impression he was upset about the woman and not the groceries.
But now in a different room, thanks for pointing that out.
What the fuck are you doing?
What are you talking about?
What are you saying?
What do you think flippant and trivial mean?
I'm not joking.
I'm.
I wanted to conduct a rational, thoughtful debate.
You were saying conversations in pop culture, great.
I'm interested in that too, so let's do that.
It's a conversation about pop culture.
Well, interesting.
Let's hear our evidence.
Let's see what we can get going here and what conclusions we can draw.
So far, the only conclusion I can draw is that you don't understand anything in the world.
Flippant means frivolously disrespectful, shallow, or lacking in seriousness, characterised by levity.
Trivial means of very little importance or value.
Insignificant.
What fucking planet do you live on?
I don't understand how you can say that the driving force of the main story arc is not taken seriously, you know, is made light of.
It's funny.
It's not something that is actually going to drive the character on.
I'm having trouble conceiving of what you must be thinking.
And then that it drives him on the main story arc surely means it's not insignificant or it doesn't have any importance or value because it is literally the reason for it.
It's all that it's about.
That's what makes them enemies.
I mean I don't get enemies from things that are trivial.
Don't you know what words mean?
Oh God, I just don't even.
I can't help myself.
You just sound like a fucking fool.
Even with the most powerful of female superheroes, especially when violence against women in the real world are at epidemic levels.
Wow, I couldn't say myself told.
I don't know, maybe you're using the academic rate, but you haven't provided us a source or any sources.
I have to be provided more information.
But yeah, so I don't know.
I can't judge.
I think the word you're looking for is hyperbolic, but that's only based on this conversation that we've had.
So I choose it.
Really hard to take it seriously.
So, you know, I'm automatically inclined to believe it's not an epidemic.
And the thing is, I don't want to dismiss that.
It's just you've been so ludicrously bad at persuading me that there is anything ever that you understand.
I would appreciate seeing the figures.
I mean, it's mind between women and men.
I would need to weigh that up.
I mean, you know, quality.
We have to remember that the Women in Refrigerators list was created for us to identify, understand, and resist the variety of ways that women and our fictional representations are disempowered and victimized.
I'm not saying women can't ever die in comic books.
Yeah, 'cause that would be crazy.
But it matters how and why they die.
Yeah, we covered how- Yeah, we-we-we-we-we-we did cover it.
I'm kind of scared of you.
I am scared that someone with your lack of grasp of the actual facts of this situation is has done a TED talk.
You know, I now have to judge that by the other TED talks, and the other ones were generally factual.
So I and since I didn't have the statistics, but they did and they quoted them, I presumed that they would not want to ruin their reputations by quoting incorrect statistics.
You haven't quoted any statistics.
So I'm just at a loss.
I can't take you as a credible source of information.
And that means that if you did a TED talk, I can't take them as a credible source of information.
And I like those talks.
You know, they've generally been quite interesting.
So comic book, TV and movie writers, and video game producers, stop relying on stereotypical tropes.
Do you not know what you've just done then?
you've just made them the actors and you the object are you did you did you not think that Did you not think that through?
You're an actor too.
You managed to raise like $150,000 or something.
you could easily start making video games with $150,000.
You managed to get, you're part of a big community.
If the feminists actually cared, then wouldn't you all just say, right, okay, which of us can program?
Oh, we can.
Right, which of us can make 3D models?
Oh, we can.
Which of us can make sounds?
Oh, we can.
Which of us could do voice acting?
Oh, we can.
You could make your own fucking games.
I'm sure you have the people for it.
I'm sure that the talent is there for it.
You've just undermined your whole cause by saying we can't do it ourselves.
We need the men to do it.
Don't complain that men make shitty things you don't like if you don't make anything yourself.
You know, if you work on the natural assumption that all of these developers are male, which I'm sure they're not.
I'm sure that large amounts of the stuff are female.
And so stop using violence against women as a way to further the storyline of your male hero and start writing us as full and complete human beings.
Are you fucking stupid?
The...
What...
What is wrong with you?
That they are a full and complete human being is directly implied simply by the way the male character who the story is about reacts.
He is overwhelmed with concern for them because they are the most important person in that character's life, hence the enemy using that against them.
Why do you assume that I mean it's it's not like comic books have got infinite space in which to print.
Some things have to be shown rather than told and this is how comic books have done it.
It's actually a sign of good writing.
Okay, maybe it is a bit subtle for you, but it the male characters are so concerned, ergo, the woman must have been so important.
For someone to be important, they must have had some sort of conversation.
You know, I do not think of women I have had one night stands with as important.
However, I feel that, you know, my girlfriend of a year and a half is incredibly important.
And if something terrible happened to her, my God, it would be the end of my fucking world.
You know, it's it's automatically given in the audience.
It is in itself, I guess, a trope, but it's not a negative trope.
It's not negative.
It doesn't carry negative connotations in men's minds.
Don't worry, it's okay.
Stop panicking.
It's not as bad as I feel they need to console you.
It's it just just have some feels.
It is I guess we're cool.
So you just wanted me to validate your feelings.
I did not know that at the start of this I'm not trying to get at Anita Sarkeesian as a person who As a person she seems like she's probably very nice.
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