This is a discussion on Gender and Biohazard. within the Viral Research forums, part of the Central Laboratory category:
This is a look into two of our leading ladies, and something interesting I noticed about the Japanese versions of the game.
In English, it is pretty easy to discern ...
This is a look into two of our leading ladies, and something interesting I noticed about the Japanese versions of the game.
In English, it is pretty easy to discern a softer tone from a stronger tone, more feminine tone from a more masculine tone -just from the way you talk.
It is pretty easy to tell that Claire's speech is softer while Jill's speech is a lot stronger, as in RE3. We can tell this just by listening to them. I think its safe to say that Claire has a more "feminine" tone, and Jill has a more "masculine" tone. As we get further away from the gender stereotypes of old, we have come to idolize strong women.
But in the Japanese versions of the game, the characters have subtitles. Imo, the following is very interesting:
In RE3, Jill's speech is littered with ultra feminized softeners in her speech, especially when her speech is very strong in English. In Japanse, you can feminize and soften speech by adding ending sounds to sentences such as "wa" and end questions in the more feminine "kashira?" as opposed to "ka?" which would be more normally used. So when Jill's strong personality is showing in English, the Japanese subtitles are softening and feminizing it, as if they are toning it down.
But when we look at Claire in RE2, who is closer to the "ideal" gender stereotype of woman of old with her strong maternal instincts and softer speech, her language is not littered with the gender specific speech enders like Jill. I would think that Claire's speech would be littered with ending like "wa" and "kashira," because of the way she speaks in English, but no.
This leads me to believe that Capcom, is indeed, sexist, and very confused. If we look at RE2, Claire is a very strong woman, but also with strong maternal instincts. Jill on the other hand, originally starts off as very clueless and stupid. Despite being a member of STARS, she seems almost helpless and weak, despite, of course, fighting the zombies in the mansion. She needs barry to protect her (Jill sandwich anyone?), while Chris protects Rebecca.
In RE3, however, Jill is very strong. In Code Veronica Claire is made out to be weaker than in RE2, and needs protecting by Steve and her brother, Chris. At the same time she storms a facility by herself and pulls a lot of action stunts.
Capcom seems to want to make its females very strong, and yet at the same time it feels the need to tone them down or present situations in which they need to be protected by strong men. They seem confused to me.
In strictly linguistic terms, this is a very interesting observation. My question is though whether this reflects sexism in the Japanese society (for which the subtitles are intended) as a whole or if -as you pointed out- it was a deliberate decision on Capcom's part, independently from the target players.
CERU, keep in mind one thing that there's a huge difference between the first conception of a character drawn out in character art and written into the first script and then the character that goes past focus tests, player review, script revisions, and so on and so forth.
Jill and Claire, and the Resident Evil series in general, comes so damn close to being a "feminist" game series, insofar as it would have equality in the series between men and women.
The first test to see if a form of media is 'equal' as it were goes like this: "Do two women talk about something other than a man?"
Resident Evil 1: I can't recall it. Jill and Rebecca never meet. Resident Evil 2: Yes, chock full of the ladies talking. Resident Evil 3: No. Resident Evil CV: I can't remember if Claire and Alexia actually have a conversation, or if its mainly Claire talking to Alfred or Chris coming to save Claire and thus he's the one having the chat with Alexia. Resident Evil 4: I don't think Ashley and Ada interact in any real form.
And then you have the costumes. The ladies of Resident Evil wear tight, form fitting t-shirts, tube tops, miniskirts, wet suits, daisy dukes, long flowing dresses and high heels, so on and so forth. The guys wear police uniforms, combat vests, so on and so forth.
Jill is constantly falling on her ass and being saved by Barry. Rebecca is constantly being saved by Billy or Chris.
I mean, it's nothing to get in arms about - I very strongly suspect that Capcom simply gets more positive responses from their fanbase when they portray women in the way they do in their games - plucky, heroic, strong but nooooot quite equal, and so write the scripts to fit. After all, the trend in what the ladies wear is arguably much worse after 1, and 4 is a sausage-fest, PS2 and Wii exclusives notwithstanding.
Oh, I don't think Capcom are sexist. I just think Japanese culture can be misunderstood as "perfect" by an outsider- As gender equality goes Japan is pretty advanced in that aspect, but the actual video game industry (both western and eastern) is so dominated by male developers, producers and artists that the games are going to be more of a male oppinion of women rather than a female oppinion of women.
For starters RE games have been largly realistic is actual female design, unlike devil may cry where every female charicter is sporting 30DDs and flirting with Dante.
I always felt that the Resident Evil series was good when it came to the female characters in their games. The fact that they survive the outbreaks along with men and use guns like a pro, show just how tough they are. I always felt that female characters were more realistic when it came to just being a person. Yea sometimes they come off as being weak but when your in a situation that they where put in it is just natural for anyone. That fact that the men are always big, muscular, cocky, emotionless and plain boring just gets old after a while. Guys like Chris and Barry have no personality or Leon, Carlos, and Luis who just come off as chessy.
As far as Claire not being strong character wise in RE CV, the only reasoning I could think of is that they wanted to develop a love story between her and Steve. Also they wanted the focus at the end of the game be on Chris and looks that now that Claire has found Chris that is probably done with the series, which is a shame.
Last edited by Stars1356 : 06-18-2008 at 05:14 AM.
I don't believe they're taking a sexist approach with this.
Stop and think about the character reactions...In Code Veronica, Steve loved Claire. When you love someone, you want to do whatever you can to protect them even if they don't need it. So maybe what Capcom was thinking in Code Veronica's case wasn't the Claire necessarily needed to be protected by a man but more of less that the man, Steve, wanted to protect her because he cared for her. Just as what Chris would want to do as the older brother- having the feeling that he needs to protect his 'little sister'.
As for Jill, I didn't get the impression that she needed Barry to protect her since Barry hardly showed up. Sure, he did pull her out of the room when the ceiling was falling but I wouldn't interrupt that as her needing protection since she was able to do a lot in the mansion herself. If anything, it may be just what her character is; getting into trouble quite a bit but not being completely helpless.
Rebecca's case is a bit different. While she's hardly ever alone (she either had Barry or Chris with her), it's hard to say rather or not it's because she's a weak woman. Don't forget, Rebecca is an inexperienced rookie and is also very young. The events she goes through are probably difficult for her to handle which maybe the reason why she needs a bit more help than the other female leads.
And then of course you Alexia and Ada. Both are bad asses. So...Yeah. :P
I don't believe that they're taking a sexist approach, but the end result does have a bit of sexism in it. I don't know if it's because of focus testing, or subconsciously written that way or whatever - but in the REmake, Jill constantly falls on her ass and gapes while Chris heroically darts off to save Rebecca, Ada wears a flowing gown and high heels, Jill seductively walks through the flames of Raccoon wearing a miniskirt and tube top in promo art. Like in terms of comparison to other video games? Resident Evil is fucking fantastic in terms of gender equality. But it's not quite ideal yet.
It doesn't have to be intentional in order to be sexistic. I honestly don't think they've ever thought about beyond making the women somewhat realistic.
Gender and Biohazard.
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