A few people have asked me what I thought of Fat Princess; unthinkingly, I replied, "it looks cute."
Oh, and then I realized that there's supposed to be a controversy, since we have a game where the object is to rescue an obese woman and drag her around because her captors have overfed her. Some people are insulted.
I feel a little obtuse that it didn't even occur to me to anticipate that anyone would be upset about this; then again, I have been a little tired lately. Turns out I guess I didn't get a crazy airplane disease after all, but that I have hay fever, which means I cough and feel tired every day. So tired, in fact, that my reflexive response is to say, "Oh, get over it, fatty, it's just a game," and crawl back under my covers.
Of course, you know how I feel about "it's just a game." Surely there are some cases where it applies, where we ought to lighten up, and this might be one of them, but let's think about it anyway.
"I'm positively thrilled to see such unyielding dedication to creating a new generation of fat-hating, heteronormative assholes," says this particular argument, sarcastically, against Fat Princess.
The crux of the question is, does Fat Princess encourage fat-hating? Is it a really mean game? I'm thinking about this, really. Obviously, we as a society have a very narrow range of "acceptable" body types for people to have in order to be considered attractive, and I guess our media shows us that slender ladies are attractive, while fat ones are, at best, comic relief. I get the argument that this arrangement sucks, and it's narrow-minded to promote these ideals, but what's the alternative?
Should the princess not be fat, or something? Should we just decide no women in video games can be fat? I'm thinking while I write this that I've actually no memory of ever having seen a fat woman in a video game that wasn't a monster (Queen Brahne?), and that the fat princess is awful cute, and it's a funny convention in terms of game mechanics for her weight to make the rescuing difficult.
Right, it's supposed to be humorous, and I can see, maybe, why fat people wouldn't want their weight issue to be a joke, an obstacle for video gamers to hurl insults at. But the let's-say-"rubinesque" female as comedic character is a convention as old as the princess-needs-rescuing chestnut itself.
But hey, I promised not to toss aside the argument against Fat Princess so easily. One could argue that there are all kinds of admirable female comedians who've used their fat as a kind of female power. I think you were supposed to laugh at their jokes and admire them for being non-traditional, and for surviving society's narrow-mindedness intact, right? So why can't we have a funny, non-traditional princess to rescue? Isn't it kind of cute that, for once, the knights aren't strong enough to lift the lady?
Honestly, even I have to try real hard to even look at this so deeply. I don't think about Fat Princess any more than I think about other fat cartoon characters. Which is to say it would be weird, and I'd think equally discriminatory, to exclude them because, why again? We can laugh at slender people but not fat ones?
I'm pretty slim these days, but I had a period of being a fat teenager. Would I have been insulted by Fat Princess? I don't think so; I never thought of myself as a two-dimensional, cartoonish pig. That was a fake ideal, a comic convention, and I was a person. Period.
As is usually the case with these sorts of things, there may be a larger social issue here that actually has little to do with video games -- video games seem useless and detached, easily edited, less entrenched in our cultural consciousness, so it's easy to blame them. It would be a bit unnecessary here for me to explore the reasons why people become fat and talk about taking responsibility, and lectures on accepting self and others don't really go here, either, but the real resolution to the argument probably lies somewhere in there.
So yeah, as you can tell, I'm finding this pool too shallow to dredge much. I'm just gonna go with "it looks cute" from here on out.
[Update: I elaborated a little more formally at Kotaku.]
26 comments:
I rolled my eyes when I heard about this "controversy." And anyway, the reason there is a negative stigma against being overweight is because people think that means the person possesses some sort of negative trait, like lack of discipline; and that's not always the case.
But in this game, she's fat because she's forced to be, which means she never would have become some icon representing fat people and our attitudes toward them. Plus, isn't the whole thing just really Japanese in conception instead of American?
As long as it comes out and no one changes it over this "controversy", I'm fine with it. Count me in for "it looks cute."
"I'm thinking while I write this that I've actually no memory of ever having seen a fat woman in a video game that wasn't a monster"
The Voodoo Lady from the Monkey Island series?
I think you raise a good point in mentioning that there are very few - if any - videogames that feature fat women who aren't monsters. And certainly this is the first videogame I can think of in which a fat woman is your prize, the object (yes, she's being reduced to an object, but I think that's another conversation entirely) of all your efforts. If the princess looked, as most videogame females do, like a porn star, would that be any less offensive to fat people?
I think you could argue for a degree of subversion here if the game is presenting an obese woman as something not to be avoided but to be fought valiantly for.
I'm with you. I went back and forth in my blog post on this issue, but, as much as I try not to dismiss feminism and 'fat issues', I don't think they really have a case with this game.
It looks cute.
I had a look around at the various blog posts on the subject. So much hate! Can't we all just get along?
One could choose to play the game without the princess ever becoming fat couldn't they?
but anyway, "it looks cute."
I realize that the mainstream blogs---not this one, but the Kotakus and Joystiqs of the world---need things to link to and need lots of hits, and nothing gets the kids riled up more than someone raising any sort of negative point about a game, but does one random blog post from a site no one's heard of really qualify as a controversy?
I can only remember two "heavy" female characters that were playable protagonists. One was Mitsuko, the were-boar from Bloody Roar, who was heavy in the "unusually muscled" fashion - pretty rare for a female character, but in keeping with a certain degree of the ridiculous fighting-game physique. The other is Mrs. Pac-Man, who probably counts as being obese (by virtue of being spherical),
but who had the good fortune of being from the days when videogame art was more abstract.
Personally, I don't really have any major sexism concerns about Fat Princess. But I'm much more concerned about how some people in the gaming community have responded to charges of sexism with actual sexism.
As you mention, there certainly are few fat female characters in video games. How about fat female characters that you are charged with saving? This would seem to be a rare gaming moment in which the object of desire isn't a nubile [sex]love interest.
Wait, fat people have feelings other than blind lust for the next pack of ding-dongs?
The bandwagon of controversy moves ever onwards.
Seriously - this is pretty dumb. Fat people are heavier than thin people. Some women are fat. It's not like the knights are refusing to rescue her or have disdain for her 'cos she's fat, right? Sheesh, next they'll be saying we can't have black zombies or something.
What bothers me is that it seems that the feminist movement doesn't want women to be different. Fat princess? No go. Beautiful princess? No go, because that's clearly glorification of beauty and making all women seem like barbie. Black princess? Blatant attempt at diversity! The only way the feminists (sorry if i lump feminists all together) would be happy if it was an empowered princess who rescued herself. That game would be no fun.
Leetdood: I like to think not nearly all feminists think that way: only the radical, misandrist ones that give the movement a baaad name.
Changing the subject, a game about a princess that rescues herself? Make it and I'll be the first sucker in line t buy it :)
Ok, I don't know if there's really a controversy or not. But I think there is one really obvious difference between the fat princess and other fat characters.
Let's quote you back at yourself:
"I don't think about Fat Princess any more than I think about other fat cartoon characters."
Do you see the type error there? "Fat Princess" is a game, not a character--albeit a game that has a fat princess as a character, of course.
And I think that's why there's controversy, if there is any; I suspect putting it in the title changes things. I haven't bothereed thinking about why, though.
(If nothing else, it intentionally calls attention to itself, possibly intentionally seeking to provoke controversy.)
While I do understand the importance of considering issues like this, it's very hard to take them seriously when they come form a source such as the one sited.
For example, at the end of the post we have a picture of the blogger giving the middle finger. Who is she flicking off? Sony? I believe Sony is a company composed of at least several people. Which one of them is she making a rude gesture towards? Then it ends with a postscript mocking a nine year old system, which is related to what exactly? Sony's long track record of humiliating the overweight?
It's confusing.
I wish that academic discussions of videogames could be conducted a little with a little more maturity. We do want to be taken seriously, after all. This stuff; it's not helping.
And it does look pretty cute.
Change the gender of the objective (to Fat Prince) and watch the controversy evaporate!
When I first saw the screenshots, read the concept, and heard about the title of the game, I thought "what a unique concept." But I did soon think it encourages demeaning attitudes towards fat people.
The whole game's concept is a clever joke. While you play the game, you're supposed to laugh at yourself because you'll be asking "Why are we rescuing this fat girl? Who would do such a thing?" Some might see this as a clever lampoon of the primarily male playerbase's mindset, but let's be real here.. this game isn't criticizing the "No fatties, lol!" crowd with a stern finger wag, it's letting them have a good time while giving them a slight elbow to the sides, and chuckling along with them. Who in God's name would rescue a fat woman? is basically the sales pitch of this game.
From a design perspective, they easily could have changed the setting so the characters are not people, but just cartoonish blobs or slimes or something, and the Princess would be the fattest slime of all.
It would be the exact same game, really, and not be offensive to anyone.
So either the developers are also obtuse or they're really digging this controversy...
Er, well, third option: they don't care what people think.
Point being that the game can exist in an inoffensive way without depriving the game itself of anything major. Even the humor of a fat princess can be replicated with non-human characters.
"I'm thinking while I write this that I've actually no memory of ever having seen a fat woman in a video game that wasn't a monster"
I think Ms Venus from Crazy Taxi (2?) fits the description.
The sad thing is that if it were called "Slim Princess" they would still be offended.
The good thing is that it's making people think about a social issue which is what art is usually supposed to do, so... Woohoo!... kind of.
I wouldn't call it cute, not with all the violence, I'm going to go with: It looks awesome!
I had no idea this game would actually generate any controversy. Reading through a few of the feminist blogs (at least, outside of Shakesville) I can sort of see where a few people are coming from, but it’s hard to see it as anything more than a fun little videogame with some interesting gameplay mechanics. It looks so lighthearted and silly that I can’t really fathom why people would get upset by it.
Big girls need lovin' too.
One specific point a lot of critics have made is that part of the game involves the princess getting more fat as she eats sweet desserts.
This idea in particular, that fat people are to blame for their fatness because of their unhealthy diets, shows up all the time (e.g., in Phil Villarreal's comment above) as a way of excusing fat-hatred.
That aspect, combined with the point of the joke pinpointed by Charlie_Six, gets at the real issue that is causing people to be upset about this game: it's definitely not simply a matter of portraying a fat woman in a video game that has people up in arms, and anyone who pretends it is is being obtuse.
I believe there was a character named Macha is Chrono Cross who was fat and not a villain or monster.
http://www.rpgclassics.com/shrines/psx/cc/macha.shtml
Of course, she was as disposable as 90% of the rest of the cast anyway.
The captors have overfed her - possibly the only reason she is fat? Doesn't matter, this is stupid - nobody says that other games are offensive so why should Fat Princess be that way as well?
Ciao
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