The Damsel in Distress Syndrome in Video Games

The role of what is expected from video games characters is something that people think they know very well. But they don't know the truth behind the role that women usually play in these games. The videos that I watched talked about the history of the "Damsel in Distress" and how they have used the darker twists and hybrid forms of it to create new roles and plot tools for these games. The videos defined this trope as when a female character is objectified and placed in a situation where they are made helpless and must wait for a male antagonist to save them. I found that their overwhelming number of examples to be very through, but also a tad bit on the side of overkill as they example after example, sometimes at least ten different titles, to make a single point and not a whole argument. the videos explored numerous titles that show that game designers have fallen into their own problems by not thinking about how the roles they place women in during the course of these games. Another note about the videos I would like to make is the fact that in the second video of the series, where they talk about the dark hybrids, such as the "girl in the fridge damsel", to be very disturbing with the idea that this was unconsciously reinforcing the ideas of misogamy. Looking pack on my own gaming experience, I'll admit that there have been a few games that have had this idea of the "damsel" needing to be saved and while i enjoyed these games, this image has not made me thing women unable to defend themselves or able to saves themselves, it is the opposite. These portrayals of the women i see as unrealistic and enforces my idea of a strong women figure. I will say that despite the overly-excessive amount of repetition of examples and the sheer ridiculousness of some of these example, the argument was valid and the idea was a sound one.

Damsel in Distress

I chose to watch both parts 1 and 2 or ‘Damsel in Distress Trope’. To be completely honest, these videos were flawed. They seem more appropriate for spare time youtube browsing than for an academic assignment. However, as a youtube video about video game tropes, it made some good points. There is a clear tendency of video games and most entertainment in general, to use women as objects of pleasure to achieve, rather than people who are capable of interaction and important roles. This is both a product of our culture, and an influence on it. But we have all heard this before. While this video’s message is important to think about, I would prefer to talk about how it is different from other media with the same message.

There is a terrible tendency of feminists to become ‘men-haters’. These feminists tend to be extremists who view all men as fundamentally sexist, and women as superior. What I appreciated about this video is that it avoided doing that. In the last five minutes of part 2 Anna begins to talk about how this trope affects culture. During this discussion she makes a point to say that she doesn’t think that creators of video games mean to be purposefully misogynistic. They are creating games that will sell, with plots that will motivate the players.  These creators did not sit down with the intention of furthering damaging stereotypes or being sexist. They were creating a product. The problem is that what sells is objectifying women.  

Sexism today is a subtle thing. It is a rare person who admits to being sexists, and acts upon those beliefs intentionally.  It is the pervasiveness of such tropes of this one in entertainment that creates a gender role for women that is damaging. While creating these games is very unlikely to be a deliberate act of sexism, they still are harmful. Men in general are not misogynistic pigs out to destroy opportunities for women, and seeking to commit violent acts against the female population.  However, there is still a pervasive culture of female objectification.

Female objectification in video games

The first video I watched of Anita Sarkeesian detailed the "damsel in distress" trope that many video games have adopted. Their hero, almost always male, has to rescue some poor, often sexualized woman who is in some sort of predicament that she cannot solve on her own. Anita makes the argument that this representation is detrimental to women in society because it makes us out to be helpless, and plays into the archaic idea that women are the "weaker sex". It makes men out to be strong and indestructible. This is bad for both men and women in real life because it reduces women to a lot less than they are worth, while also making men who may not be identified as "strong" feel emasculated. They perpetuate this idea that women can never solve their own problems or be independent, and men are only good for rescuing women. This trope also makes women out to be objects, because generally they are wearing provocative outfits, and have the stereotypical large breasts and long legs that are seen as attractive on a female body. The second video I watched from her was a lot more disturbing. It detailed the violence put against women in many popular games such as Grand Theft Auto, where women are usually sexually or physically assaulted to add to the "realistically" of the video game. In many games, women are brutally raped, killed, or beaten in front of the protagonist of the game, to serve as some sort of misogynistic setting. Young men are psychologically normalizing these events against women, which is a huge problem in society, because these acts are seen as normal or even good. This feeds to the rape culture that is already a problem. Sarkeesian throws out the statistic that 1 in 5 women in the United States will be raped or sexually assaulted in her life time, and the portrayal of rape in these video games makes a mockery of what actual survivors have to go through. The video game industry needs to look into changing their portrayal of women, because it is bad for everyone.

female objectification in video games

I grew up watching my brothers play video games and during high school I became something of a gamer myself, so I can honestly say I have a lot of love for video games, but there's no denying that they can have a strong influence on the minds of the players. I never took any time to think about the damsel in distress trope found throughout video games and especially what the chick in the video calls the "damsel in the fridge". She says that the women in the video games essentially become a prize, an object, for the main character to retrieve or avenge in order to gain back their sense of masculinity or to punish those who dared to steal away their property. It's really awful to think about young boys and teens playing games like these and having that ingrained sort of belief that women are property and that they are to be viewed as belonging to them. I'm unsure if there's any scientific evidence of there being a permanent influence on boys but I have done research on the influence that pornography (not to go off topic) has on young boys and teens and I can't imagine this is much different. To spend many hours of every day, as I know gamer's do, playing an interactive game where the main quest is to retrieve a woman who has been taken from you can't leave a healthy impression, it simply wouldn't make sense for it to have no affect whatsoever. It doesn't help that many games are centered around stereotypical masculine accomplishments; overcoming enemies, fighting your way out of difficult situations, being the strongest etc etc. Like she says it's mostly about violence and sometimes problem solving of course if you're playing a more interesting game. Of course I couldn't help but combat many of the examples she gave of video games that exploit this trope and try and make it more edgy with games that I know and love that don't have that, if only for the sake of believing there to be some good in video games. Of course most of those video games that I thought of are about saving the world; assassin's creed, mass effect, diablo. I recently started playing the new Tomb Raider and although the main story line is rescuing your entire group of friends, including a specific female who has been captured, the fact that the main protagonist is also a female does make it seem less insulting.

Questions:

Would video games benefit from being made for both male and female gamers?

Is the damsel in distress trope used mainly as a fall back for video game producers to have something to drive the plot?

Hypocrisy at its finest

I will pride myself on trudging through two parts of Anita's "analysis" of women's roles in video gaming (Damsel in Distress 1&2), that still doesn't mean that I didn't suffer acid reflux from it. Anita is one of those feminists that you cannot find any middle ground with, you're either an "educated" SJW or a misogynist man; there is no winning the argument with people like her. Despite the fact that she takes many of her clips from Retsupurae and other sources (and does not credit them) or the fact that she FREQUENTLY takes scenes out of context (I point specifically to her use of cut scene footage from Ninja Gaiden[2:31] Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II[2:33] Deadlight[2:43] and Ninja Gaiden II[2:46], I will go into those later), the fact that she has the audacity to make the claim that even though that there are strong and well written female characters(which she still complains weakens their character when and IF they are captured at some point), the very fact that any form of harm befalls a member of the XX chromosome is obviously some patriarchal plot of misogyny (whether intentional or incidental). Such as when she goes on about how when women are captured they wait for their heroes to save them but when a man is captured, they engineer their escape (she uses footage of Metal Gear Solid during this tirade, which if she played the game, she would know that the one female character in distress[Meryl Silverburgh] actually does manufacture her own escape before even meeting our protagonist [Solid Snake]), though for the most part the reason for this is because most characters that get captured either have no capability of performing such an action (Princess Peach or civilian characters) or it's just a one-time thing (most military female characters).
When she shows the footage from the games I listed above, while she does tell you the games they are from, she portrays them in such a way that you are meant to feel like there is some sort of injustice going on, even though it's just semi-decent storytelling (btw SPOILERS). For example in Star Wars: TFU2, we see Darth Vader force choking Juno Eclipse, (our protag. Star Killer's romantic interest) the reason for this is not because Lord Vader hates women, but because he knows that Star Killer has romantic feelings for her and that by killing her, he would enrage our protag. and drive him further to the Dark Side of the force (the philosophy behind which is that strong emotion is what strengthens a Sith's power). In Ninja Gaiden I and II, our leading ladies have been captured by very large and very powerful Greater Fiends (specifically Rachel & Doku and Sonia & Alexei, respectively) Rachel was to be used as a sacrifice to open a portal to the underworld, and Alexei is just a weird androgynous demon who gets his kicks out of being evil. Now Deadlight is the toughest example to explain (but not impossible), in the midst of a zombie outbreak, a Big Brother-esque authoritarian government is taking all sanctions possible to both prevent contamination and to garner information about our protag. so in an attempt to  do both,  they take off her clothes (above the underwear) and toss her in the showers immediately taking a fire hose to her, they are subsequently killed by our protagonist.
What really tweaks my torque is the fact that every time you see her in some mainstream media outlet she professes on how much of a "gamer" she is (in her use of this terminology she is making obvious connections to the realm of competitive gaming[your Call of Duty, Halo and Battlefield players{specifically multiplayer} and their ilk]), yet there is a video on YouTube by a channel called "Flying Turkeys"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcPIu3sDkEw, that shows footage of her saying "I'm not a fan of video games, I actually had to learn a lot about video games in the process of making this." So which is it Anita? She then goes on to say, "I would love to play video games, but I don't want to go around shooting people, and ripping off their heads and it's just gross so..." I guess games like Cooking Mama, The Sims, Super Mario Bros, Sly Cooper, and Spongebob just don't exist.  If you want an actual intellectual giving her two cents, here's another video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MxqSwzFy5w

Damsel in Distress 1 & 2

I'll come out and say it: I've always been a Sims girl. I like to think that I make my male and female characters the same, and I've never really strayed away from the Sims franchise, while my brother on the other hand has been a fan of almost every first person shooter/swordsman/whatever weapon bearing game that has come out in his lifetime. I've watched him play, and it never occurred to me as strongly as it is pointed out in parts one and two of the Damsel in Distress videos: these video games are exploiting the plot device of women being over powered and taken in order to drive the story. I can agree with most points she makes in her videos, the main one being that most female characters are made as prizes or goals to strive to. While in real life, finding a mate is essentially the biological life goal, most men do not have to fight a demonic monster or robotic zombie in order to win over his love interest that has been taken hostage, so why is this prevalent is so many video games targeted just to men? As she puts it, it is the epitome of "adolescent male power fantasies".  

In her second video, she points out that while the woman is the prize, she is also almost always physically abused or transformed into some other being, and in the case of the latter, needing to be killed in order to be saved. They almost seem to go hand in hand with each other, but why does it need to be that way? Why can't the woman run along side the man, aiding in combat and getting another prize, like cash money, which is what people want in real life anyway? I would definitely like to see a female centered video game, one more so that doesn't have her scarred by a war torn world that makes her strong, or where she has to fight a some creature to save herself. 

Damsel in Distress One/Two

I thought that all the points made by both part one and two of the Damsel in distress blog was very true and very disappointing. As a girl that frequently likes to play video games it is often a problem that I run into trying to play a female character that is the main character as well as a strong, independent character. Even in the select few games that I have managed to find this there is still a sexuality being displayed by the character. For example, in Heavenly Sword the main character, Nariko, is an able fighter, and has a fierce personality. But her oozing lustiness, and the fact that with the outfit she is wearing would not keep the girls in at all, underwhelms all this. Though outfits aside perhaps this is a small step in the right direction, if not slightly misguided. One recent development in the gaming world I wish was addressed by the blog is a phenomenon that I have decided to title the father-daughter effect. The father-daughter effect being where a masculine protagonist takes on a young girl to fill a daughter role, this is seen in The Last of Us, as well as The Walking Dead. The two pairs being Joel and Ellie, and Lee and Clem. This still purveys a feeling of men taking care of the family, or the innocent girl, and gives a masculinity boost. But something we see that is new is the young girl having more mettle than first appeared.  So is this just a continuation of the “Damsel in Distress trop” as discussed in the blog? Or are we seeing a new generation of able bodied, feminine characters.  

What are good examples of games that do not utilize the damsel in distress trop, while still having a driving plot?

Where is the line of having a strong female character, but not ultimately making a she-man?

Damsel in Distress: Parts 1&2

After watching the first two parts of "Tropes VS Women in Video Games", it is clear that many women gamers have had an issue with this for some time. The first video primarily focused on the depiction of women in video games always being the helpless, weak victim needing to be saved. The second part in this film series focuses on "how the plot device (in video games) is often used in conjunction with graphic depictions of violence against women". As a male watching this, I am questioning the significance of the argument against male characterization in video games. Before I continue, I would like to make a point that I can understand why a female gamer would become annoyed with always being a male hero in the game. As a female gamer, gender identity will automatically conflict when the protagonist is dominantly a male character. Women want to play a game where their own gender is the main character, saving the planet, not being saved due to a lack of ability.
With that being said, I would like to make a counterargument against the feminist view in video games. One counterargument I have is the decades in which her arguments are based off of. Yes, there are a couple games from only a few years back, but overall the examples she used were based off of video games from the 90's. In current video games, there is less sexism. The reason for this decrease in sexism brings me to my second arguing point. When video games first came out, the target market wasn't women, it was teenage boys. A teenage boy doesn't want to be a girl saving the world, they want to be a man. That was the purpose for the "damsel in distress" in many early video games, such as Mario. A man is "supposed to save the women", not the other way around. As time went on and more girls started to get into gaming though, the "damsel in distress" is almost non existent.
The "damsel in distress" isn't supposed to be offensive towards women, it is supposed to target young boys and provoke gender roles.
My concluding statement to this is; I understand where this women is coming from in her argument, but overall I don't think that society will view women any differently if their role in video games changes. Men have been told from the beginning of time that they are the protectors, women being heroines in video games won't change that.

Damsel in Distress (most biased garbage I've seen in a long time)

After watching the first part of Damsel in Distress I decided to watch the second part of her video serious.  For me I thought this was a very interesting subject since video games are something I find very enjoyable in my life and something I know a lot about.  So naturally when anything comes along of a similar nature I'm quick to critique it.  First off I want to say that she is well spoken and the videos are done at a professional level, yet that isn't surprising as she had a kickstarter for the whole thing.  She uses a lot of good examples and does make some valid arguments, however here is what she did wrong.
You can look at everything she says from another perspective, in my opinion a far more reasonable perspective and all it requires is for you to not believe that all men are sociopaths.  The first problem is that Anita doesn't understand how video games are made.  Video games are the opposite of real life, in real life you have people, and they find a purpose in life.  For example "you are a woman, and therefore you are a goal" is sexist, it judges you on your gender, it says nothing about the woman but it does say something about the speakers opinion on women.  But video games don't work that way. It's not like peach existed, and they decided that since she's a woman, she's a goal, instead video games need a goal, they need incentive for the player. The goal comes first.  Well, how do you give the player an emotional incentive? By hitting him were it hurts, hurt a loved one, take what is dearest to the players heart.  Also a big point is that the target audience is men, and what is dearest to a man's heart? Well a woman.  This doesn't say anything about women, or about men's opinion on women, it only shows you something about the fantasies of men, who they want to be, and what they treasure most.  They want to protect women, that is their instinct.  But Anita sees this and sees only negativity. It takes a special kind of indoctrination that lets you look at a game where a man risks life and limb in order to be of use to a woman, and conclude that he is a vile oppressor.
Furthermore I would just like to leave a picture that is a list of strong female characters in video games.

Everybody Yell!!!

I'm not interested in starting any sort of an argument or war, but I have been tasked to give my clearly sexist male opinion. 

After watching two videos, damsel in distress and women as background decoration part two, I feel like I need to take a shower. The lack of any substantive information leads me to wonder why, for academic purpose we are watching this entrepreneurial, give her credit, hack. It appears that Anna has raised 1.5 million dollars two years ago to do some scholarly investigation into the role of gender and video games and has done nothing but buy some games and begin spouting feministic opinion. And at a cost of nearly 25 grand per 30 minutes she is one of the highest paid actress I’ve ever hear of. After checking her site for some sort of background information so as to understand this object role dichotomy she keeps referring to, I can find nothing other than some TED talks and some Amazon links to some books, that she doesn’t site, and some small research that after reading sounds like an unbelievable moron. And the only study that was kind of of a study disagrees with her entire premise. Claiming that people, all 200 or so of them, were actually more aware of sexual norms after the game and not less aware as Anna claims.

Now, despite the poorly done videos there is something to be said about the role of sex in video games. To me, based on the current games she discussed, Assassins Creed and so on, are simply representation of cultural norms. AC is set during a time when prostitution was a legitimate way for women to make money. And as we are all aware men like attractive women, we are wired that way, and women as best I can tell by their dress like to feel attractive. I have no research, like Anna, so this is just me positing my own OPINON. You may disagree and that’s cool. What I will say is that there is a huge cultural difference in how women are portrayed in Asian communities than how they are portrayed in the United States. The idea that men get away with rape and murder of women by arguing in court is absurd. There is zero factual data to support this. Women in film and games, for the most part, play the roles that they play in real life, housewives, mothers, sex workers. These are the roles that women have chosen for themselves and for the most part have not been forced into them.  This is what I took away from the videos again this is my opinion maybe I’m completely wrong, however maybe I am not.

Damsel in Distress and Effects

Anita Sarkeesian brought up issue that I had previously never thought deeply about until now – the issue of the damsel in distress constantly portrayed in video games and the effects that it may have on our culture. Personally, I believe I could argue both for and against the some of the comments that she had to make. In arguing against her proposal that the damsel in distress trope in video games needs to be monitored more carefully, I think it is important to point out the violence seen against women everyday on television shows and in films. Modern day films such as Batman: The Dark Knight Rises and Spider-Man 2 portray this. Needless to say, it is difficult not to see some type of action or suspense movie and not have some sort of spin on the victimized girl. Therefore, if the belief that domestic violence may stem from just these video games – I think that is shortsighted – this trope is everywhere in our culture today. However, I can also concur with her in the argument that these video games may produce real, physical violence against women. This, I believe, is due to immersive nature of interacting in the gaming world. When you play a video game, a part of you becomes and identifies with the character whom you are controlling, and with this increasing trope of damsel in distress portrayed through scenes such as wives being brutally murdered and daughters kidnapped, women asking for the men to pull the trigger themselves, and the entrapment of the dead women’s soul, I believe it could validly be argued that this produces masochist thoughts in whomever may be playing out the video game. We become the stories that we take in, subconsciously or consciously, we strive to fulfill these storylines out in our real life – and with a story such as this one, it can cause detrimental effects. All in all, as Erica stated, I liked how Anita presented these ideas and yet states that we don’t play these games, or even create them, with the intentions of stimulating these kinds of actions in real life. Games are that – just games, and should never be taken literally. Unfortunately, our culture may have reached a stage (with three women reported being murdered by husband or boyfriend a day) where these issues may need to be investigated more thoroughly.

Questions:

1.     Are there video games on the market that are less violent, yet incorporate the same plot lines as the damsel in distress that are as successful? Or is the damsel in distress trope only successful with a decent amount of blood involved?

2.     Anita stated that the reverse situation of a girl avenging the death of her husband/boyfriend is virtually nonexistent. If a game such as this were to be put on today’s market, do you think it would sell with the issue of feminism being more prevalent in today’s society?

Damsel in Distress

I thought that Anita Sarkeesian's videos, Damsel in Distress; Tropes Vs. Women in Video Games part 1 and 2, brought up some very good points, and while being slightly exaggerated at times, was less accusatory, and more honest. It wasn't until she was mentioning how many games actually do employ the trope that I even noticed how widely it is used. Although, as she says, this damsel in distress trope is not new, it seems the basis of many story lines for new games. Growing up and playing video games on many different consoles, I remember getting bored with the typical "save the princess/daughter/girlfriend" quest games and eventually lost interest in playing games entirely. This is not the fault of the game, but more generally just what sells better in the gaming market. I agree that there is some sense of enjoyment when playing video games, but also believe that the stereotypical quest game should be adapted. It was refreshing to hear a female's feminist viewpoint on video games that wasn't solely bashing games and accusing them for male society's downfall. Although her argument is not perfect, it is important to see that the video game industry is depending on this trope in all aspects. These are games geared toward males, and leave the female gamer community ignored. Even in quest games with a female lead choice, there is often still the adventure of saving a sister/mother/princess, and sometimes it is even played in that the female character is only there because something happened to the male hero. While this is not entirely true for all types of video games, and some game franchises are built entirely around a female antagonist (Laura Croft, etc), why is it that these games are able to be repeated over and over with very little changes in character development and story line? How does such an overabundance of these games minimalize the female gamer's experience?

Enjoy the Game Now; Ask Questions Later

     Right from the start, the Feminist Frequency videos present an interesting, understandable, and thought provoking stance on the role of women in video games. Anita makes it clear that she wants to dissect the video game's cultural elements while STILL enjoying the game.
     For me, at least, this was a welcome change. It seems that some feminism/gender role material is really just a superiority contest, with neither side willing to even admit some enjoyment in the other gender's company. These ultra-opinionated circles spend all their time searching out things that they can blow up into some huge deal, even if it really wasn't meant to be a big issue. This is not true with Feminist Frequency. Instead of ragging on all the games and telling every viewer to boycott the company, the system, and the game itself, she says that it is okay to just enjoy the game since, hey, that is what it was created for. She also reminds us to just make sure that we are aware of the tropes being used and the dangers supporting and living out these tropes present to society.
     This really adds a bit of maturity to everything else she says. She isn't just some kid telling us to throw away our childhood; she is pointing out how horrid the stereotype of the weak woman and the macho man are to society (as well as how creepy it is to have a robotic arm that is actually one's wife). Really, the "damsel in distress" trope is harmful to both genders. It weakens the woman while also making it out that every single guy in the universe has to save a girl if he is to be proven a man. Even worse, it can be happening subconsciously, as I realized in Part 2 when she talked about how guys may subconsciously feel the "perfect" woman is someone they have to save, kill, or brutalize. Now, I am not a guy so I honestly have to ask . . . is that true? Do you want to have a girl you constantly have to save or someone who turns into a demon vampire and tries to kill you?
     This could easily be flipped over on girls, too. I mean, we all read or watched Twilight at some point, and there are a plethora of other "monster"-man/human-girl stories out there. Subconsciously, are we now searching for some guy who possesses those qualities? Are we now drawn to ultra possessive, paranoid guys who could kill us at any moment? Going back to video games, are we secretly all masochists who think that yeah, we could totally die as a symbol of loss-of-innocence or some other crazy crud like that?
      Or did we take away no deeper meaning than enjoyment of the game?

Feminist Frequency

After watching part 1 of FeministFrequency's Damsel in Distress video, I decided to continue on and watch part 2 as well. First of all I'd just like to say that I really enjoyed watching both of these videos. She spoke in a clear way that was easy to follow and understand. Another thing I really appreciated about her videos was that she included clips from every single game she mentioned. I can't imagine that that was an easy task to gather all of those clips, but being a visual person myself, I found it very helpful to see what she was talking about first hand.
Being a non-gamer, I really appreciated her sort of historical lesson at the beginning of her first video. Yes I'm aware of the whole "damsel in distress" trope but it's not something I had ever given much thought to before watching this video so I guess I had always assumed that this particular trope began with Disney's Snow White, or Cinderella, etc. I didn't realize that this whole idea of the "damsel in distress" trope began much earlier.
I really liked her argument about violence against women in part 2 of her Damsel in Distress video. Although I don't think that video game developers are encouraging violence against women I do agree with her argument that it is something that needs to be addressed and talked about, especially in video games and films.

Anita Sarkeesian vs. Rockstar

Anita Sarkeesian, while making several valid points, falls into the classic sensationalist trap of exaggeration and hyperbole. These extended and weakly supported claims take away from the valid claims she makes and detracts from her credibility. The second video I choose to watch was “Women as Background Objects pt 2” and she addressed in more detail how sexualized women have become in video games. She talked about how sexualized female characters are often used to market to a straight male audience and exist as little more than objects. I agree that such representations are shallow and lack artistic value but she tries to place misogynistic shackles on far too many female characters for my liking.

She addressed the random acts of violence towards female characters in games like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption as macho power fantasies being fulfilled and here her argument seems to weaken. Anita Sarkeesian is incredibly knowledgeable about games as long as it sticks to her argument and she seems to conveniently forget the other murders and beatings in these games. I have seen quite possibly thousands of random acts of violence and crime in both Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption. These are mature games, featuring explicit violence, drug use and language. The sad truth of the world of both GTA and RDR is that sexual violence happens and women are beaten. The games do not portray these things as positive or in any way acceptable. They simple depict a darker and more dangerous side of the world we live in. The depiction is not a service to depraved male desires but rather a valid piece of an incredible artistic work in the case of both GTA and RDR.

Vampires x Zombies

I noticed that the article said that zombies were starting to take a turn that vampires had already taken. That is that they are starting to become more romanticized (for example Warm Bodies) though having not quite reaching the level that vampires have reached. I was curious as to exactly what monster would take their place, (I personally think that the vampire makes a somewhat return with Dracula Untold, yes they sympathize him but all the same I'm hoping that as his vampirism takes hold, he turns into more of a monstrous character) maybe Wolf-Man or Creature from the Black Lagoon. I remember watching a video that took a look at the dichotomy between the vampires and zombies on a cultural level (it was a Cracked "After Hours" video (admittedly meant for humor) called "4 Terrifying Psychology Lessons Behind Famous Movie Monsters"); there, I remember, was a political aspect to it, the Liberals view Conservatives as zombies "Monolithic mobs of endless consumerism",  and vice-versa as vampires, "Sexually ambiguous outcasts that suck the lifeblood out of society". The video raised a few points that were raised in class as well about the loss of self, humanity, etc. There is also another video by the same channel that touches on a few reasons why vampires have fallen out as epitomes of horror and (in my opinion) devolved into sex symbols.
Here are link to the videos...
(Psychology of Monsters) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWq8j0yXkMI
(Vampiric Sexuality) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkdbfC_2BCI

Zombies vs Vampires

Reading this article was very enjoyable for me. I love exploring human emotions rather physical, so when this article introduced the idea of zombies and vampires representing different human aspects, I was all for it. Firstly, I never thought to compare vampires and zombies and the different things they portray to the world. But I noticed, it would be quite easy to spot if I was looking at it from that perspective. When watching a vampire movie, they really are perfect. They don’t age, they have long lives and their faces never change, the zombie however, changes drastically. You almost cannot recognize anything human about them. I thought it was interesting how they used the idea that a zombie shows us the “horror of our bodies” the way we can change into something so inhuman is a pretty scary thought, and the zombie embodies that. Secondly, it really made me understand the walking dead comic much more. It’s hard to see the human side that Robert says he is trying to explore in the intro of the comic. But reading this made that so much more plausible, and the story of the comic that much more complex. The inside of a zombie is so much more interesting than the outside!