A concept in film where because most films are made by heterosexual men they are shot from the perspective of a straight man and force that perspective on the audience.
He went into talking about how the camera is used in media to demonstrate this, long lingering shots of a females body and close up shots tell the audience that this women is attractive.
from a story telling perspective it is useful as it tells the viewer that this character is the love interest or a character to be desired. Yet it is used often in games and other mediums as some form of fan service.
Even if the audience is male and female and on occasion mostly female the audience is forced to look through a straight male perspective.
Being shown this straight male perspective time and time again leads to that perspective of a straight male being the view that is more normalized and held above all other sexuality and gender roles.
There is such a thing as 'female gaze' although that tends to be only explored in media aimed towards those interested in men.
there are shots of men with there clothes removed in the mainstream media although those shots tend to be further away, showing the whole character or at least involving there head, they are never considered to be just something to look at. Often an image of power and strength of the character.
The question the video asked at the end was how to go about this for a more varies society?
Should we objectify men more for the female/LGBT audiences?
Or make all character equal and no one will be objectified.
He also mentioned that we are a society that likes sex and to me that should not be something we repress and ignore.
On the other hand it is not be the main focus of a character. There body should not be there only feature. I think games should be able to have characters of all gender who express or explore there sexuality, audiences should not be afraid of it or deem it wrong something to keep behind closed doors.
If we were to just pretend sexuality and sexual urges don't exist that would just lead people to a closed minded state. Possibly deeming there own urges wrong or weird.
To me if a game is labeled as a 15/18 game then the audience is mature enough to understand sexuality and sexual characters. So long as the character has other traits and roles besides there sexuality. I'm aware there are genre's such as beat-em-up's where you can't really add to characters other than a fighting style and there appearance.
When it comes to those sort of games i could say it's okay to have one or 2 female characters who dress scantily clad but you must also be aware not your whole audience is straight and male, having the male equivalent and having and even ratio of female characters most of which who are not scantily clad would make a more diverse audience while still maintaining the awareness of a sexual society.
Just majority of games seem to go down the Fan-service route where a character is simply dressed in scantily clad clothes and having close up shots of there body.
It would be nice to know why that character dresses and acts that way rather than the character just being a selling point of the game.
I think having a 'sex symbol' of a game isn't a bad thing, just don't treat them souly as the love interest or sex symbol in the story. Although that being said there are games where there should not be scantily clad characters, for example women who are fighting off zombies or in a general fighting for there life scenario then showing skin is just unnecessary. Especially if it's a realistic style and setting as it just makes the character look as though they are unaware of what is going on right now.
