Transcript

Clip- Princess Peach: Mario! Ah! Help!

Clip- montage

Welcome to our multi-part video series exploring the roles and representations of women in video games. This project will examine the tropes, plot devices and patterns most commonly associated with women in gaming from a systemic, big picture perspective.

This series will include critical analysis of many beloved games and characters, but remember that it is both possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of it’s more problematic or pernicious aspects.

So without further ado let’s jump right in to the Damsel in Distress.

Let’s start with a story of a game that no one ever got to play.

Back in 1999 game developer RARE was hard at work on a new original title for the Nintendo 64 called “Dinosaur Planet”. The game was to star a 16 year old hero named Krystal as one of the two playable protagonists. She was tasked with traveling through time, fighting prehistoric monsters with her magical staff and saving the world. She was strong, she was capable and she was heroic.

Clip- Dinosaur Planet Trailer Footage
And who might you be, animal girl?
My name is Krystal!

Pretty cool right? Well it would have been, except the game never got released. As development on the project neared completion, legendary game-designer Shigeru Miyamoto joked about how he thought it should be the 3rd installment in his Star Fox franchise instead. Over the next two years he and Nintendo did just that. They re-wrote and re-designed the game, and released it as Star Fox Adventures for the Game Cube in 2002.

Clip- Star Fox Adventures

In this revamped version the would-be protagonist Krystal has been transformed into a damsel in distress and spends the vast majority of the game trapped inside a crystal prison, waiting to be rescued by the game’s new hero Fox McCloud.

The in-game action sequences that had originally been built for Krystal were converted to feature Fox instead. Krystal is given a skimpier more sexualized outfit.

Clip- Star Fox Adventures
Wow. She’s beautiful! What am I doing?!

And yes, that is cheesy saxophone music playing to make sure it “crystal clear” that she is now an object of desire even while in suspended animation – to add insult to injury Fox is now using her magic staff to fight his way through the game to save her.

Clip- Star Fox Adventures

The tale of how Krystal went from protagonist of her own epic adventure to passive victim in someone else’s game illustrates how the Damsel in Distress trope disempowers female characters and robs them of the chance to be heroes in their own rite.

The term “damsel in distress” is a translation of the French “demoiselle en détresse”. Demoiselle simply means “young lady” while détresse means roughly “Anxiety or despair caused by a sense of abandonment, helplessness or danger.”

As a trope the damsel in distress is a plot device in which a female character is placed in a perilous situation from which she cannot escape on her own and must be rescued by a male character, usually providing a core incentive or motivation for the protagonist’s quest.

In video games this is most often accomplished via kidnapping but it can also take the form of petrification or demon possession for example.

Traditionally the woman in distress is a family member or a love interest of the hero; princesses, wives, girlfriends and sisters are all commonly used to fill the role.

Of course the Damsel in Distress predates the invention of video games by several thousand years. The trope can be traced back to ancient greek mythology with the tale of Perseus.

According to the myth, Andromeda is about to be devoured by a sea monster after being chained naked to a rock as a human sacrifice. Perseus slays the beast, rescues the princess and then claims her as his wife.

In the Middle Ages the Damsel in Distress was a common feature in many medieval songs, legends and fairy tales. The saving of a defenseless woman was often portrayed as the raison d’être – or reason for existence – in romance tales or poems of the era involving a ‘Knight-errant’ the wandering knight adventuring to prove his chivalry, prowess and virtue.

At the turn of the 20th century, victimized young women become the cliche of choice for the nascent American film industry as it provided an easy and sensational plot device for the silver screen. A famous early example is the 1913 Keystone Kops short “Barney Oldfield’s Race for a Life” which features the now iconic scene of a woman being tied to the railroad tracks by an evil mustache twirling villain.

Clip- Barney Oldfield’s Race for a Life

Around the same time, the motif of a giant monkey carrying away a screaming woman began to gain widespread popularity in media of all kinds. Notably, Tarzan’s love interest Jane is captured by a brutish primate in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1912 pulp-adventure “Tarzan and the Apes”. In 1930, Walt Disney used the meme in an early Mickey Mouse cartoon called “The Gorilla Mystery”.

Clip- The Gorilla Mystery

The imagery was even exploited by the US Military in this recruitment poster for World War I.

But it was in 1933 that two things happened which, 50 years later, would set the stage for the Damsel in Distress trope to become a foundational element in video games as a medium. First, Paramount Pictures introduced their animated series “Popeye the Sailor” to cinema audiences.

The formula for most shorts involves Popeye rescuing a kidnapped Olive Oyl.

Clip- Popeye the Sailor
marry me?!
Oh popeye, help!

Second, in March of that year, RKO Pictures released their groundbreaking hit film “King Kong” in which a giant ape abducts a young woman and is eventually killed while trying to keep possession of her.

Clip- King Kong
[Screams]

Fast forward to 1981 when a Japanese company named Nintendo entrusted a young designer named Shigeru Miyamoto with the task of creating a new arcade game for the American market.

Originally, the project was conceived of as a game starring Popeye the Sailor, but when Nintendo wasn’t able to secure the rights, Miyamoto created his own characters to fill the void, heavily influenced by the movie, King Kong.

Clip- Donkey Kong

The game’s hero “Jump Man” is tasked with rescuing a damsel, named “The Lady” after she is carried off by a giant ape. In later versions she is renamed “Pauline”.

Although Donkey Kong is perhaps the most famous early arcade game to feature the Damsel in Distress it wasn’t the first time Miyamoto employed the trope. Two years earlier, he had a hand in designing a 1979 arcade game called Sheriff.

Clip- Sheriff

In it a vague female-shaped collection of pixels, referred to as “The Beauty”, must be rescued from a pack of bandits. The hero is then rewarded with a “smooch of victory” for his bravery in the end.

A few years later Miyamoto recycled his Donkey Kong character designs; Pauline became the template for a new damsel named Princess Toadstool and “Jump Man” became a certain very famous plumber.

Clip- Super Mario Bros: The Great Mission to Save Princess Peach
[Screams]

Princess Peach is in many ways the quintessential “stock character” version of the Damsel in Distress. The ill-fated princess appears in 14 games of the core Super Mario Brothers platformer games and she’s kidnapped in 13 of them.

Clip- Mario 25th Anniversary Video

The North American release of Super Mario Brothers 2 in 1988 remains the only game in the core series in where Peach is not kidnapped and also the only game where she is a playable character. Though it should be noted it wasn’t originally created to be a Mario game at all. The game was originally released in Japan under a completely different title called Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic which roughly translates to “Dream Factory: Heart-Pounding Panic”.

Clip: Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic Japanese ad- [Japanese Dialogue]

Nintendo of America thought that the original Japanese release of Super Mario Brothers 2 was too difficult and too similar to the first game so they re-skinned and re-designed Doki Doki Panic to star Mario and Luigi instead.

Clip – Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic

Clip- Super Mario Bros. 2

However the Japanese game already had 4 playable characters, so the designers opted to include Toad and the Princess to fill the two remaining slots, building directly on top of the older pre-existing character models. So really, if we’re honest, Peach is kinda, accidently playable in this one.

Clip- Super Mario Bros 2

Still, she had the awesome ability to float for short distances, which came in really handy especially in the ice levels.

Sadly Peach has never been a playable character again in the franchise. Even with newer games that feature 4 player options, like New Super Mario Brothers Wii and Wii U, the Princess is still excluded from the action. She’s been replaced with another Toad instead as to allow Nintendo to force her back into the damsel role again and again.

Clip- New Super Mario Bros U

Peach does of course appear in many spin-offs such as the Mario Party, Mario Sports and Mario Kart series as well as the Super Smash Brothers Nintendo Universe crossover fighting games. However all of these spins-offs fall well outside the core Super Mario series of platformers. She is the star of only one adventure and we will get to that a little later.



One way to think about Damsel’d characters is via what’s called the subject/object dichotomy. In the simplest terms, subjects act and objects are acted upon. The subject is the protagonist, one the story is centered on and the one doing most of the action. In video games this is almost always the main playable character and the one from whose perspective most of the story is seen.

So the damsel trope typically makes men the “subject” of the narratives while relegating women to the “object”. This is a form of objectification because as objects, damsel’ed women are being acted upon, most often becoming or reduced to a prize to be won, a treasure to be found or a goal to be achieved.

The brief intro sequence accompanying many classic arcade games tends to reinforce the framing of women as a possession that’s been stolen from the protagonist.

Clip- Montage

The hero’s fight to retrieve his stolen property then provides lazy justification for the actual gameplay.

At its heart the damsel trope is not really about women at all, she simply becomes the central object of a competition between men (at least in the traditional incarnations). I’ve heard it said that “In the game of patriarchy women are not the opposing team, they are the ball.” So for example, we can think of the Super Mario franchise as a grand game being played between Mario and Bowser. And Princess Peach’s role is essentially that of the ball.

Clip: Super Mario Galaxy 2
Princess Peach: Mario!

The two men are tossing her back and forth over the course of the main series, each trying to keep and take possession of the damsel-ball.

Clip- Mario Sports Mix

Even though Nintendo certainly didn’t invent the Damsel in Distress, the popularity of their “save the princess” formula essentially set the standard for the industry. The trope quickly became the go-to motivational hook for developers as it provided an easy way to tap into adolescent male power fantasies in order to sell more games to young straight boys and men.

Clip- Montage
Help me! Help me! Help me! Save me! Help! Please help me please!

Throughout the 80s and 90s the trope became so prevalent that it would be nearly impossible to mention them all. There are literally hundreds of examples showing up in platformers, side scrolling beat-em ups, first person shooters and role-playing games alike.

Clip- Montage

Many of these games drew inspiration from the historical myths that we discussed earlier. Medieval legends, Greek mythology and Arabic folk tales were all popular themes.

Let’s take a quick moment to clear up some common misconceptions about this trope. As a plot device the damsel in distress is often grouped with other separate tropes: including the designated victim, the heroic rescue and the smooch of victory. However it’s important to remember that these associated conventions are not necessarily a part of the damsel in distress trope itself.

So the woman in question may or may not play the victim role for the entire game or series while our brave hero may or may not even be successful in his rescue attempt. All that is really required to fulfill the damsel in distress trope is for a female character to be reduced to a state of helplessness from which she requires rescuing by a typically male hero for the benefit of his story arc.

This brings us to the other famous Nintendo Princess. In 1986 Shigeru Miyamoto doubled down on his Damsel in Distress formula with the NES release of The Legend of Zelda. This was the first in what would become one of the most beloved action adventure game franchises of all time.

Clip- Zelda 2 The Adventure of Link Ad ! The legend of Zela continues
Rescue the princess! Zelda! Zelda! Zelda 2 The Adventure of Link! Nintendo! Now you’re playing with power!

Over the course of more than a dozen games, spanning a quarter century, all of the incarnations of Princess Zelda have been kidnapped, cursed, possessed, turned to stone or otherwise disempowered at some point.

Clip- Montage

Zelda has never been the star in her own adventure, nor been a true playable character in the core series.

However it must be said that not all damsels are created equal and Zelda is occasionally given a more active or integral role to play than her counterpart in the Mushroom Kingdom. Unlike Peach, Zelda is not completely defined by her role as Ganondorf’s perpetual kidnap victim and in a few later games she even rides a line between damsel and sidekick. Remember the Damsel in Distress as a plot device is something that happens to a female character, and not necessarily something that the character is from start to finish.

Once in awhile she might be given the opportunity to have a slightly more active role in facilitating the hero’s quest – typically by opening doors, giving hints, power-ups and other helpful items. On rare occasions she might even offer a last minute helping hand to the hero after all is said and done at end of the journey. I call this variant on the theme “The Helpful Damsel”.

Indeed Zelda is at her best when she takes the form of Sheik in Ocarina of Time (1998) and Tetra in The Wind Waker (2003).

Clip- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

In Ocarina of Time, Zelda avoids capture for the first three quarters of the game. Disguised as Sheik she is a helpful and active participant in the adventure and is shown to be more than capable, however as soon as she transforms back into her more stereotypically feminine form of Princess Zelda, she is kidnapped within 3 minutes. Literally 3 minutes, I timed it. Her rescue then becomes central to the end of Link’s quest.

Clip- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

Similarly, in The Wind Waker (2003), Tetra is a feisty and impressive young pirate captain. But as soon as she is revealed to be, and transformed into her more stereotypically feminine form of Princess Zelda, she is told that she’s no longer allowed to accompany Link on the adventure because it’s suddenly “too dangerous” for her. She is ordered to wait in the castle, which she does until she is eventually kidnapped, while waiting obediently in the same spot. It is noteworthy that in the very last stage of the boss battle, she does help Link fight Ganondorf, for a few brief minutes, which is a refreshing change.

Clip- The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

However the next time Tetra’s incarnation appears in 2007’s The Phantom Hourglass she is kidnapped immediately during the intro. Later she is turned to stone and then kidnapped for a second time.

It’s disappointing that even with her moments of heroism, Zelda is still damsel’ed – she is removed from the action, pushed aside, and made helpless at least once in every game she appears in.

Clip- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Original Ad

This brings us to one of the core reasons why the trope is so problematic and pernicious for women’s representations. The damsel in distress is not just a synonym for “weak”, instead it works by ripping away the power from female characters, even helpful or seemingly capable ones. No matter what we are told about their magical abilities, skills or strengths they still ultimately captured or otherwise incapacitated and then must wait for rescue.

Distilled down to its essence, the plot device works by trading the disempowerment of female characters FOR the empowerment of male characters.

Clip- Vigilante

Let’s compare the damsel to the archetypal Hero Myth, in which the typically male character may occasionally also be harmed, incapacitated or briefly imprisoned at some point during their journey.

Clip- Montage

In these situations, the character relies on their intelligence, cunning, and skill to engineer their own escape — or, you know, just punching a hole in the prison wall works too.

The point is they are ultimately able to gain back their own freedom. In fact, that process of overcoming the ordeal is an important step in the protagonist’s transformation into a hero figure.

A Damsel’ed woman on the other hand is shown to be incapable of escaping the predicament on her own and then must wait for a savior to come and do it for her.

Clip- New Super Mario Bros Wii

In this way the Damsel’s ordeal is not her own, instead it’s framed as a trial for the hero to overcome. Consequently, the trope robs women in peril of the opportunity be the architects of their own escape and therefore prevents them from becoming archetypal heroes themselves.



Today many old-school damsel games are being resurrected for modern platforms, services or mobile devices as publishers are in a rush to cash in on gaming nostalgia and capitalize on any recognizable characters from years gone by.

For example- SEGA’s 1993 platformer Sonic CD featuring a damsel’ed Amy Rose has been enhanced and made available for download on a wide variety of modern platforms

Clip- Sonic CD

Jordan Mechner’s famous (1984) Karateka and Prince of Persia (1989), originally released for the Apple ii home computer in the 1980s, have both seen modern HD remakes.

Clip- Montage

And the 1983 animated Laserdisc game Dragon’s Lair with ditzy Princess Daphne has been ported to just about every system imaginable

Clip- Dragon’s Lair
Daphne: Please save me! The cage is locked! With a key! The dragon keeps it around his neck! To slay the dragon us the magic sword!

Remember Pauline, damsel from the classic Donkey Kong arcade?

Clip- Donkey Kong

Well she has also been revived, first in 1994’s Donkey Kong for the Gameboy and later in the Mario vs Donkey Kong series for the Nintendo DS. Each game features a re-hashing of the old excuse plot with Pauline is whisked away by the giant ape during the opening credits.

Clip- Mario vs Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem- Mario!
Pauline: Please help me!

The now iconic opening seconds of the 1987 beat-em up arcade game Double Dragon has Marian being punched in the stomach, throwen over the shoulder of a thug and carried away. In several versions her panties are clearly shown to the player while being abducted.

Clip- Double Dragon

The game has been remade, re-released and ported to dozens of systems over the last 25 years, ensuring that Marian will continue to be battered and damseled for each new generation to enjoy. Most recently Double Dragon Neon in 2012 re-introduced new gamers to this repressive crap yet again, this time is full HD.

Clip- Double Dragon Neon

The pattern of presenting women as fundamentally weak, ineffective or entirely incapable also has larger ramifications beyond the characters themselves and the specific games they inhabit. We have to remember that these games do not exist in a vacuum, they are an increasingly important and influential part of our larger social and cultural ecosystem.

The reality is that this troupe is being used in a real-world context where backwards sexist attitudes are already rampant. It’s a sad fact that a large percentage of the world’s population still clings to the deeply sexist belief that women as a group need to be sheltered, protected and taken care of by men.

The belief that women are somehow a “naturally weaker gender” is a deeply ingrained socially constructed myth, which of course is completely false- but the notion is reinforced and perpetuated when women are continuously portrayed as frail, fragile, and vulnerable creatures.

Just to be clear, I am not saying that all games using the damsel in distress as a plot device are automatically sexist or have no value. But it’s undeniable that popular culture is a powerful influence in or lives and the Damsel in Distress trope as a recurring trend does help to normalize extremely toxic, patronizing and paternalistic attitudes about women.



Now I grew up on Nintendo, I’ve been a fan of the Mario and Zelda franchises for most of my life and they will always have a special place in my heart, as I’m sure is true for a great number of gamers out there. But it’s still important to recognize and think critically about the more problematic aspects especially considering many of these franchises are as popular as ever and the characters have become worldwide icons.

The good news is that there is nothing stopping developers from evolving their gender representations and making more women heroes in future games. It would be great to finally see is Zelda, Sheik and Tetra as the protagonists at their own games… and not just mobile DS games, I’m talking full-on console adventures.



Ok, so we’ve established that the Damsel in Distress trope is one of the most widely used gendered cliché in the history of video games and has been core to the popularization and development of gaming as a medium. But what about more modern games? Has anything changed in the past ten years? Well, stay tuned for part 2 where I’ll be looking at more contemporary examples of the Damsel in Distress trope. We’ll look at all the dark and edgy twists and turns and see how the convention been used and abused right up until today. And then we’ll check out some games in which developers have tried to flip the script on the Damsel.

I would like to extend a big thank you to all my backers on kickstarter who have continued to support me and helped to make this video series a reality!

Welcome to the 2nd episode in our multi-part series exploring the roles and representations of women in video games. This project examines the tropes, plot devices and patterns most commonly associated with women in gaming systemic, big picture perspective.

Over the course of this series I will be offering critical analysis of many popular games and characters, but please keep in mind that it’s both possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy a piece of media while also being critical of it’s more problematic or pernicious aspects.

I just want to caution viewers that as we delve into more modern games we will be discussing examples that employ some particularly gruesome and graphic depictions of violence against women. I’ll do my best to only show what is necessary but this episode does come with a trigger warning. It’s also recommended that parents preview the video first before sharing with younger children.

In our previous episode we explored the history of the Damsel in Distress and how the trope became so pervasive in classic era games from the 80s and early 90s. We also explored some of the core reasons why damsel’ed characters are so problematic as representations of women. So if you haven’t seen it yet, please check that one out before continuing to watch this one.

As a trope the damsel in distress is a plot device in which a female character is placed in a perilous situation from which she cannot escape on her own and then must be rescued by a male character, usually providing an incentive or motivation for the protagonist’s quest.

Now it might be tempting to think the Damsel in Distress was just a product of its time, and that by now surely the trope must be a thing of the past. Well, while we have seen a moderate increase in the number of playable female characters, the plot device has not gone away. In fact the Damsel in Distress has even seen a bit of a resurgence in recent years.

Clip – Montage

The Bouncer- [Screams]
TimeSplitters 2- [Screams]
Rygar: The Legendary Adventure- “Rygar!”
Maximo: Ghosts to Glory- “Silence!”
Castlevainia: Harmony of Dissonance- “Nooo!
Grabbed by the Ghoulies- [Muffled screams]
Resident Evil 4- [Screams]
Red Steel- “You’ve got to get me out of here”
Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword- [Screams]
Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones- [Laughter]
Devil May Cry 4- “Come and get her”
Prototype- “Alex!”
Ghostbusters: The Video Game- [Screams}
Splatterhouse (2010)- “He’s…He’s hurting me”
Alan Wake- [Screams]“Alice?!”
Deadlight- “Help, Please!”
Hitman: Absolution- “Bullet in her head!”
Ninja Gaiden II- “What a dear little bird you are”

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg; suffice it to say the trope is alive and well even today.

Clip- Devil May Cry 4
“Let her go!”

And since the majority of these titles focus of delivering crude, unsophisticated male power fantasies, developers are largely unwilling to give up the Damsel in Distress model as an easy default motivation for their brooding male heroes or anti-heroes. Remember that as a trope the Damsel in Distress is a plot device used by writers, and not necessarily always just a one-dimensional character type entirely defined by victimhood.

Now and then Damsel’d characters may be well written, funny, dynamic or likeable.

Clip- Psychonauts
“I’m just trying to set you on fire through this stupid hat!”
“What a delightfully mean little brain you have.”

However this extra character development tends to make their eventual disempowerment all the more frustrating. Damsels on the more sassy end of the spectrum may struggle with their captors…

Clip- Hitman: Absolution
“Get away from me!”

… or even attempt an escape on their own but inevitably their efforts always prove futile. Occasionally they may be allowed to offer the hero a last minute helping hand or to kick the bad guy while he’s down but these moments are largely symbolic and typically only happen after the core adventure is over or the danger has passed.

These token gestures of pseudo-empowerment don’t really offer any meaningful change to the core of the trope and it feels like developers just throw these moments in at the last minute to try to excuse their continued reliance on the damsel in distress.

Periodically, game developers may attempt to build a more flushed out relationship or emotional bond between Damsel’d character and the male protagonist. In the most decidedly patronizing examples depictions of female vulnerability are used for an easy way for writers to trigger an emotional reaction in male players.

As we discussed in our first episode, when female characters are damsel’ed, their ostensible agency is removed and they are reduced to a state of victimhood.

So narratives that frame intimacy, love or romance as something that blossoms from or hinges upon the disempowerment and victimization of women are extremely troubling because they tend to reinforce the widespread regressive notion that women in vulnerable, passive or subordinate positions are somehow desirable because of their state of powerlessness. Unfortunately these types of stories also help to perpetuate the paternalistic belief that power imbalances within romantic relationships appealing, expected, or normal.

Ok so we know that the Damsel in Distress is alive and well in gaming but that’s not the full picture, there’s even more insidious side to the story. Over the past decade game companies have been desperately searching for ways to stand out in a market increasingly oversaturated with very similar products. As a consequence we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of games attempting to cut through the clutter by being as “dark and edgy” as possible.

So we’ve seen developers try to spice up the Damsel in Distress cliché by combining it with other tropes that involve victimized women. I’ve identified a few of the most common of these trope-cocktails, which join together multiple regressive or negative representations of women including the disposable woman, the mercy killing and the woman in the refrigerator.

The term “Women in Refrigerators” was coined in the late 1990s by comic book writer Gail Simone to describe the trend of female comic book characters who are routinely brutalized or killed-off as a plot device designed to move the male character’s story arc forward. The trope name comes from Green Lantern issue #54, in which the superhero returns home to find his girlfriend murdered and stuffed inside his refrigerator.

This trading of female characters lives for something meant to resemble male character development is of course part of a long media tradition, but the gruesome death of women for shock value is especially prevalent in modern gaming. The Women in the Refrigerator trope is used as the cornerstone of some of the most famous contemporary video games. It provides the core motivational hook behind both the Max Payne and the God of War series for example.

Clip- God of War
“My wife…my child…”

In each case the protagonists’ wife and daughter are brutally murdered and their deaths are then used by the developers as a pretext for their inevitable bloody revenge quest. It’s interesting to note that the reversed scenario, games hinging on a woman vowing revenge for her murdered boyfriend or husband are practically nonexistent. The gender role reversal is so unusual that it borders on the absurd, which is one of the reason’s why this scene from Disney’s Wreck it Ralph is so humorous.

I could do a very long video just exploring this one trope in gaming, but today I want to look at how the Woman in the Refrigerator is connected to the Damsel in Distress and specifically the ways game developers have found to combine these two plot devices. One popular variation is to simply use both tropes in the same plotline so as to have the male protagonist’s wife stuffed in the fridge while his daughter is damsel’ed.

In Outlaws (1997) your wife is brutally murdered and you then have to rescue your daughter.

Clip- Outlaws
“Who did this?”
“They’ve taken Sarah”

In Kane & Lynch your wife is brutally murdered and you then have to rescue your daughter.

Clip- Kane and Lynch
“I’ll find them all before they find Jenny”

In Prototype 2 your wife is brutally murdered and you then have to rescue your daughter.

In Inversion your wife is brutally murdered and you then have to rescue your daughter.

Clip- Inversion
“Leila, where is she?”

In Asura’s Wrath your wife is brutally murdered and you then have to rescue your daughter.

Clip- Asura’s Wrath
“Save her.”

In Dishonored the empress is brutally murdered and you then have to rescue her daughter – though it’s heavily implied that she is your daughter too.

Clip- Dishonored
“Find Emily. Protect her!”

It’s no coincidence that the fridged plot device and the damsel plot device work in much the same way, both involve female characters who have been reduced to states of complete powerlessness by the narrative. One via kidnapping and the other via murder. The two plot devices used together then allow developers to exploit both the revenge motivation and the good old fashioned “save the girl” motivation.

Believe it or not there is another more insidious version of this particular trope-hybrid, which I call the Damsel in the Refrigerator. Now you may be asking yourself how can a fridged woman still be in distress? Since by definition being fridged usually sort of requires… being dead. Well here’s how it works — The Damsel in the Refrigerator occurs when the hero’s sweetheart is brutally murdered and her soul is then trapped or abducted by the villain. This ‘oh so dark and edgy twist’ provides players with a double dose of female disempowerment and allows developers to again exploit both the revenge motivation and the saving the damsel motivation but this time with the same woman at the same time.

This trope-combination can be traced back to old school sidescrollers like Splatterhouse 2 and Ghouls’n Ghosts but the Damsel in the Refrigerator has definitely become a more popular trend in recent years.

In Medievil 2 your murdered girlfriend’s soul is stolen and you must fight to save her.

Clip- Medievil 2
[Screams]

In The Darkness 2 your murdered girlfriend’s soul is trapped in hell and you must fight to free her.

Clip- The Darkness 2
“Her soul is mine!”

In Shadows of the Damned your murdered girlfriend’s soul is trapped in hell and you must fight to free her.

Clip- Shadows of the Damned
“Yes, help her!”
[Screams]

In Dante’s Inferno your murdered wife’s soul is trapped in hell and you must fight to free her.

In Castlevania: Lords of Shadow your murdered wife’s soul is trapped on Earth and you fight to free her.

The Damsel in the Refrigerator is part of larger trend of throwing women under the bus in increasingly gruesome ways in an apparent attempt to interject what I’ll loosely refer to as “mature themes”. Developers must be hoping that by exploiting sensationalized images of brutalized women it will be enough to fool gamers into thinking their games are becoming more emotionally sophisticated, but the truth is there is nothing “mature” about most of these stories and many of them cross the line into blatant misogyny.

Since what we are really talking about here are depictions of violence against women it might be useful to quickly define what I mean by that term. When I say Violence Against Women I’m primarily referring to images of women being victimized or when violence is specifically linked to a character’s gender or sexuality. Female characters who happen to be involved in violent or combat situations on relatively equal footing with their opponents are typically be exempt them from this category because they are usually not framed as victims.

As I mentioned in our last video the damsel in distress doesn’t always have to be accompanied by a heroic rescue.

Clip- Max Payne 3
“Here I was again, with all hell breaking loose around me, standing over another dead girl I had been trying to protect”

Sometimes the hero fails to save the woman in question either because he arrives too late or because (surprise twist!) she has been dead the whole time.

Clip Montage
Dead Space – “Nicole has been dead this whole time”
Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones (2005)- “No! Kaileena!”
InFamous- “All my powers…and I couldn’t do a thing”
Deadlight- [Cries] “Kill me”

Or in the case of the 2009 version of Bionic Commando, not only has your wife been dead the whole time but, turns out she’s also part of your bionic arm.

Clip- Bionic Commando
“I never wanted you to be involved in this”
“It’s okay, I’ll always be by your side”

Yes you heard that correctly, his wife IS his arm.

But the most extreme and gruesome variant of this trend is when developers combine the damsel in distress with the mercy killing. This usually happens when the player character must murder the woman in peril “for her own good”. I like to call this happy little gem the “Euthanized Damsel”. Typically the damsel has been mutilated or deformed in some way by the villain and the “only option left” to the hero is to put her “out of her misery” himself.

We can trace this one back to the original 1980s arcade game Splatterhouse in which your kidnapped girlfriend is possessed and the player is forced to fight and kill her.

After saving his bitten beloved in Castlevania: Lament of Innocence (2003) the hero must then kill her to gain the power to defeat Dracula.

Clip- Castlevania: Lament of Innocence
“Thank you”

In Breath of Fire 4 (2000) Elina has been turned into a hideous monster and then begs you to kill her.

In Gears of War 2, Dom is motivated to rescue his captured wife Maria. When he finds her, she has been starved and possibly tortured into a catatonic state; and so he shoots her.

In Tenchu: Shadow Assassins…

Clip- Tenchu: Shadow Assassins
“Do it, you must”

…the princess meekly asks the hero to cut her down to get to the villain, which he does.

A particularly egregious example can be found in Grand Theft Auto III (2001) when after you’ve rescued Maria Latore it’s implied that the protagonist suddenly shoots her because she is talking about stereotypically “girly things”.

Clip- Grand Theft Auto III
“I broke a nail, and my hair is ruined! Can you believe it? This one cost me $50!” [Gunshot]

The writers deliberately wrote her character to annoy the player so in the end, the violence against her becomes the punch line to a cheap, misogynist joke.

Sometimes these killings happen via cutscene while other games ask the player to participate directly by pulling the trigger themselves.

In the Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles remake if you don’t rescue Richter Belmont‘s beloved Annette, she will turn into a vampire and you’ll then have to kill her.

Clip- Castlevania: Dracula X Chronicles
“Oh my God, Annette, I’m so sorry I didn’t save you. But you know what I do to vampires. What I have to do.”
“No! I’ll make you mine forever!”

The captured women in Duke Nukem 3D beg you to kill them throughout the game. This misogynist scene is regurgitated and actually made worse in the 2011 follow-up Duke Nukem Forever developed by Gearbox.

Another popular Gearbox game, Borderlands 2, also uses this plot twist when Angel asks the player to murder her as a way to try and thwart the villain’s evil plan.

Clip- Borderlands 2
“Destroying the iridium injectors that keep me…alive…will stop the key from charging and it will end a lifetime of servitude”

The end of Alone in the Dark (2008) gives the player the choice between killing your girlfriend yourself…

Clip- Alone in the Dark
“Chose quickly, carrier. Kill her or let her live. You alone can decide!”

…or letting Satan kill her, by being reborn in her body

The Wii game Pandora’s Tower includes one ending in which Elena begs you to kill her before she completes her transformation into a monster.

Clip- Pandora’s Tower
“Please…I beg of you”

Clip-Prey
“Help me, I’m so afraid!”

In the 2006 shooter Prey, when the hero finally reaches his abducted girlfriend she has been hideously mutilated and fused with a monster, which you must fight while she screams for help over and over again

Clip- Prey
“Get away from me, Tommy! She wants me to kill you! I can’t stop it! [Screams]

After being incapacitated she begs you to kill her…

Clip- Prey
“Please, Tommy, let me go”

… and the player can’t advance in the narrative until you shoot her in the face.

These damsel’ed women are written so as to subordinate themselves to men. They submissively accept their grisly fate and will often beg the player to perform violence on them – giving men direct and total control over whether they live or die. Even saying “thank you” with their dying breath. In other words these women are “asking for it” quite literally.

The Euthanized Damsel is the darkest and edgiest of these trope-hybrids but it’s also an extension of a larger pattern in gaming narratives where male protagonists are forced to fight their own loved ones who have been possessed or brainwashed by villains.

When Kratos finds his mother in the PSP game God of War: Ghosts of Sparta, she morphs into a hideous beast forcing you to fight and kill her. An act for which she thanks you with her dying breath.

Clip- God of War: Ghost of Sparta
“Finally, I am free”

After your girlfriend is transformed into a green ogre in Grabbed by the Ghoulies she chases you around trying to get kiss. Later you beat her unconscious before she can be returned to normal.

The final boss in Shadows of the Damned turns out to be your own girlfriend…

Clip- Shadows of the Damned
“Where is my freedom?!”

…who you must shoot down. Similar scenarios are replicated in dozens of other tittles as well:

Clip Montage- Resident Evil 5
“Get that device off her chest!”

Although the narratives all differ slightly the core element is the same, in each case violence is used to bring these women “back to their senses”.

These stories conjure supernatural situations in which domestic violence perpetrated by men against women who’ve “lost control of themselves” not only appears justified but is actually presented as an altruistic act done “for the woman’s own good”.
Of course, if you look at any of these games in isolation, you will be able to find incidental narrative circumstances that can be used to explain away the inclusion of violence against women as a plot device. But just because a particular event might “makes sense” within the internal logic of a fictional narrative – that doesn’t, in and of itself justify its use. Games don’t exist in a vacuum and therefore can’t be divorced from the larger cultural context of the real world.

It’s especially troubling in-light of the serious real life epidemic of violence against women facing the female population on this planet. Every 9 seconds a woman is assaulted or beaten in the United States and on average more than three women are murdered by their boyfriends husbands, or ex-partners every single day. Research consistently shows that people of all genders tend to buy into the myth that women are the ones to blame for the violence men perpetrate against them. In the same vein, abusive men consistently state that their female targets “deserved it”, “wanted it” or were “asking for it”,

Given the reality of that larger cultural context, it should go without saying that it’s dangerously irresponsible to be creating games in which players are encouraged and even required to perform violence against women in order to “save them”.

Even though most of the games we’re talking about don’t explicitly condone violence against women, nevertheless they trivialize and exploit female suffering as a way to ratchet up the emotional or sexual stakes for the player.

Despite these troubling implications, game creators aren’t necessarily all sitting around twirling their nefarious looking mustaches while consciously trying to figure out how to best misrepresent women as part of some grand conspiracy.

Most probably just haven’t given much thought to the underlying messages their games are sending and in many cases developers have backed themselves into a corner with their own game mechanics. When violence is the primary gameplay mechanic and therefore the primary way that the player engages with the game-world it severely limits the options for problem solving. The player is then forced to use violence to deal with almost all situations because its the only meaningful mechanic available — even if that means beating up or killing the women they are meant to love or care about.

One of the really insidious things about systemic & institutional sexism is that most often regressive attitudes and harmful gender stereotypes are perpetuated and maintained unintentionally.

Likewise engaging with these games is not going to magically transform players into raging sexists. We typically don’t have a monkey-see monkey-do, direct cause and effect relationship with the media we consume. Cultural influence works in much more subtle and complicated ways, however media narratives do have a powerful cultivation effect helping to shape cultural attitudes and opinions.

So when developers exploit sensationalized images of brutalized, mutilated and victimized women over and over and over again it tends to reinforce the dominant gender paradigm which casts men as aggressive and commanding and frames women as subordinate and dependent.

Although these stories use female trauma as a catalyst to set the plot elements in motion, these are not stories about women. Nor are they concerned with the struggles of women navigating the mental, emotional and physical ramifications of violence.

Instead these are strictly male-centered stories in which, more often than not, the tragic damsels are just empty shells, whose deaths are depicted as far more meaningful than their lives. Generally they’re completely defined by their purity, innocence, kindness, beauty or sensuality. In short they’re just symbols meant to invoke the essence of an artificial feminine ideal.

Clip- Shadows of the Damned
“Help me!”

In fact these games usually frame the loss of the woman as something that has been unjustly “taken” from the male hero.

Clip- The Darkness II
“So now I take from you”
“Jackie, this is not your fault”
[Gunshot]

The implication being that she had belonged to him – that she was his possession. Once wronged the hero must then go get his possessions back or at least exact a heavy price for their loss. On the surface victimized women are framed as the reason for the hero’s torment, but if we dig a little deeper into the subtext I’d argue that the true source of the pain stems from feelings of weakness and/or guilt over his failure to perform his “socially prescribed” patriarchal duty to protect his women and children.

Clip- Max Payne 3
“And I hated myself for allowing this to happen to her, and our little girl”

In this way these failed-hero stories are really about the perceived loss of masculinity, and then the quest to regain that masculinity, primarily by exerting dominance and control, through the performance of violence on others.

Consequently violent revenge based narratives, repeated ad nauseum, can also be harmful to men because they help further limit the possible responses men are allowed to have when faced with death or tragedy. This is unfortunate because interactive media has the potential to be a brilliant medium for people of all genders to explore difficult or painful subjects.

So to be clear here, the problem is not the fact that female characters die or suffer. Death touches all of our lives eventually and as such it’s often an integral part of dramatic storytelling. To say that women could never die in stories would be absurd, but it’s important to consider the ways that women’s deaths are framed and examine how and why they’re written.

There are some games that try to explore loss, death and grief in more genuine or authentic ways that do not sensationalize or exploit victimized women. Dear Esther, The Passage and To The Moon are a few indie games that investigate these themes in creative, innovative and sometimes beautiful ways. These more contemplative style games are a hopeful sign but they’re still largely the exception to the rule. A sizable chunk of the industry is still unfortunately trapped in the established pattern of building game narratives on the backs of brutalized female bodies.

Violence against women is a serious global epidemic; therefore, attempts to address the issue in fictional contexts demands a considerable degree of respect, subtlety and nuance. Women shouldn’t be mere disposable objects or symbolic pawns in stories about men and their own struggles with patriarchal expectations and inadequacies.

The “dark and edgy” trope-cocktails we’ve discussed in this episode are not isolated incidents, or obscure anomalies; instead they represent an ongoing recurring pattern in modern gaming narratives. In most cases the damsel’ed characters have simply gone from being helpless, to being dead. Which is obviously not a huge improvement from her perspective.

I know this episode has been a little bit grim, but please join me next time for the 3rd and final installment covering the Damsel in Distress where we’ll take a look at some titles that attempt to flip the script on the damsel and then we’ll go on a quest to find some examples of the elusive “dude in distress” role reversal.