DIGITISER
  • MAIN PAGE
  • Features
  • Videos
  • Game Reviews
  • FAQ

nooo...! oh noooo! there's a woman in battlefield v!

24/5/2018

8 Comments

 
Picture
I admit it; there are days when I despair at the knee-jerk political correctness lobby. I despair because, I'm all for political correctness. I want there to be universal equality. I want us to be better than our prejudices, to evolve and grow, and not go backwards.

In short... I'm on your side, but you don't half make it difficult sometimes. I've had moments where I've stopped and gone... "Wait, are we the baddies?"

Political correctness sometimes needs to be wielded sparingly, subtly, almost invisibly, because you don't want to give the other side anything to rail against until it's too late. If you give equivalent weight to everything, then the big stuff is diminished. You reinforce the arguments of the opposition.

We have to choose our battles more wisely, fight the ones that matter, the ones that need to be fought, and let some of the smaller stuff slide. Annoying I know, but, well... FFS.

If you don't, it just looks as if you're too caught up in your own crusading to see the bigger picture. You cannot force a change to centuries of established patriarchal convention - you have to do it in a way that the gammons almost don't notice. Otherwise, you get the world we're currently living in. Compress a spring all the way, and it bounces back with even more force.

Like, years ago, when I was at school, we had a substitute English teacher for a day. We'd had him before, and he was one of those teachers who we all sort of knew was a pushover. Weirdly, he was an actor on the side, and I later saw him crop up in episodes of Cats Eyes and Doctor Who (he played "Dad" in The Greatest Show In The Galaxy). 

We decided as a class that it would be a gigantic wheeze if we all moved our desks around so that we ended the lesson in a completely different place to where we'd begun. Rather than do this en masse - which would've got us sent immediately to the Head Teacher - we did it gradually. Every time Mr Ashford looked down we'd all move our desks an inch or two, as quietly as we could. He'd look up occasionally and narrow his eyes, but he never said a thing. 

I get the frustration that we live in a world with more than its fair share of bigots. I hate that a hollow, racist, sexist, egomaniac lives in the White House. I get that - as a straight, white, male - I'm able to say all this from a position of privilege, that I'm not under the yoke. I don't know what it's like to live as a minority, and would never presume to know. 

At the same time, my fortunate position, I suppose, gives me a certain clarity; I'm not damaged from a lifetime of oppression. But then, just occasionally, the other side behave in a way which really yanks my goitre...
Picture
TRAILER TRASH
So, last night the trailer for Battlefield V dropped, immediately started trending, and I saw that people were complaining about people complaining about there being - at least as far as the marketing goes - a female protagonist with a hook for a hand. Yes: in a video game. Imagine! 

I confess that I feared initially that it was a case of the overreacting again, that there'd be a couple of whiners, at most, who were being treated as if they were an army. Because, well, who in their right mind would care that there's a female soldier, with a hook-hand,  in a video game?

But no. In this instance, the arseholes really were up in arms about the Battlefield V trailer, damning it as "Battlefield Vagina". Over on YouTube, the trailer has had almost as many dislikes as likes, with comments calling it "SJW bullshit"...

"Dice you just SPAT in the faces of all the MALE soldiers that served in the war. Congratulations on ridiculing every single ww2 veteran for a political agenda."

"I want to be a fucking nazi not a fucking female robot"

"Female...handicapped...WWII...wtf EA? Historically, no females were fighting in WWII, they were in the warehouses assembling planes, tanks, etc look up "Rosie the Riveter"; and since she's handicapped (iron arm) she wouldn't even be drafted!"

"Ah yes, Battlefield The Great Pandering. Good fucking job Dice. No one wanted this. No one asked for this."

"Freaking liberals ruining BF now, what more could they ruin."

"Dear Dice, you totally fucked up this time, with your Social Jewstice Warrior Progressive stance... Sincerely, hard working Americans..."

"WHY IS A WOMAN FIGHTING. THIS DESECRATES WWII"


Yes, some of the commenters were so blinded by hatred and fear that they seemed to have mistaken the character's evident prosthetic limb for a "robot Terminator arm", describing her as a "lesbian cyborg".

​Though by to be fair, I used to think that my Uncle Don - who had a false leg - was Bionic. Although, I was a child. And a fan of the Six Million Dollar Man.
Picture
ISSUES
I have my own issues with the BFV trailer - indeed, any trailer for a game which shows, essentially, a cut-scene as representative of the gameplay.

In the one for Battlefield V we get an unbroken battle sequence, showing characters fleeing a building as it's smashed apart by tanks, and total pyrotechnic chaos, that - frankly - doesn't remotely resemble any FPS experience I've ever had. Which generally tends to be more spawn/run-around-a-bit/die. 

I wouldn't have batted an eyelid at the fact there was a female character in there were it not for the complaints. ​​In the interests of balance, let's see how valid they are...

Oh! It would appear that women did fight on the frontlines in World War 2 - albeit mainly Russian women. However, there were others too - around 50 British women were parachuted behind enemy lines to engage in sabotage and assassinations, including Violette Szabo - a member of the French/British Special Operations Executive and a section leader in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (or, er... FANY). She performed two missions in German territory before being captured, tortured and executed.

By all accounts, the female character in Battlefield V is a member of the Dutch resistance (as in Battlefield 1, the single-player game will take place across several smaller campaigns designed to show lesser-known conflicts).

Prominent female Dutch resistance fighters included Suzy van Hall, Mona Louise Parsons, Frieda Belinfante, Sally Dormits, Frieda Belinfante, and Ja Coba van Tongeren. The US Air Force had female pilots. There were female guerrilla fighters in Italy, Poland, France, Denmark and Yugoslavia (where more than 10% of its National Liberation Army was made up of women).

Honestly, it doesn't even matter if there IS a historical precedence for a female character in Battlefield V, because - judging from that trailer, which is a purely Michael Bay interpretation of WW2 - nothing about it appears to be particularly historically accurate.

Also; it's fiction based around a real historical event, and haven't we seen enough gritty, male-dominated, WW2 games and stories? I'm far more interested in seeing a female character in such a game because it's at least something a bit new.

Plus, the rarity of female combatants during WW2 is precisely why it's more interesting, and yet, at the same time, we know nothing of the context of this character. Nothing of the game's story. Nothing beyond that completely OTT trailer, the presence of a female being the least of its issues.
EYLID
But, alas, that's not what this is about, and we all know it. We've had female fighters in WW2 games before - last year's Call of Duty in fact - and nobody batted an eyelid.

Video games, by their very nature, are going to be inaccurate. They have to be, because they wouldn't be fun otherwise. If you want to talk about EA and DICE spitting on the graves of fallen WW2 soldiers, then there's an argument to be had that the existence of any WW2 video game is insulting. Was Call of Duty WW2 really an appropriate forum to discuss The Holocaust?

Of course, this has nothing to do with historical accuracy. It's about progress, and suddenly the Angry Boyz have woken up and gone.... "Hunh? Shit. They're coming for us, lads!". It's just the same tedious arseholes whinging about "SJW agendas", and feeling threatened because they can feel their monopoly on the world slipping out of their grasp.

The one good thing to take from all this is that it's great that these people are feeling threatened, because it means they're under threat. The reason they're up in arms is because the world is changing too fast for them to adapt to easily. They're backed into a corner and are lashing out.

If they're getting that angry, that defensive, over something as trivial as there being a female character with a prosthetic arm in a video game trailer, if that's the sort of thing which keeps them up at night, then... excellent. It means it's working.

​The world is changing before our very eyes, and not before time. 
SEND AN EMAIL TO THE DIGITISER FRIDAY LETTERS PAGE!
digitiser2000@gmail.com
8 Comments
Spam Fritter
24/5/2018 08:51:59 am

"You cannot force a change to centuries of established patriarchal convention - you have to do it in a way that the gammons almost don't notice."

Or, you know, just dismiss anyone remotely supportive of established patriarchal convention as a 'gammon' so that they notice right away. Um...

Reply
Meatballs-me-branch-me-do
24/5/2018 01:59:40 pm

“nobody batted an eyelid”

Pull the other one, do you really not remember the “black female Nazis” furore around CoD:WW2? It’s only fitting they send a hook-handed lesbian to stop them!

Reply
Spam Fritter
24/5/2018 02:05:47 pm

I think you'll find the correct term now is 'vagitarian'.

Reply
Spiney O'Sullivan
24/5/2018 03:19:53 pm

Crikey, 3pm already and this comments section on an article that discusses political correctness hasn't become a terrible mess of people being called "cucks", "nazis" and "centrists". A new record?

Reply
Kendall9000
25/5/2018 08:13:22 pm

It is a weird one for people to lose their shit about - the game's so obviously over the top that it's only superficially based on the real war.

Hideous white gammon that I am, I do find the complaints more reasonable when they're about stuff that's meant to be educational -- e.g. videos on BBC Teach that depict an unrealistically politically correct past -- but a game like BF:V isn't exactly pretending to be a history lesson...

The irony is that the people angrily posting about this would be the first ones to mock the kind of PC busybodies who moan about nonsense like "cultural appropriation" or the "whitewashing" of fictional characters. They don't recognise that they're acting just as self righteous as the "snowflakes".

Reply
Luke Skywalker
26/5/2018 10:36:34 am

In a post Titan fall, Advanced Warfare and Infinite Warfare world, players have been craving more authentic experiences.

The developers of the new COD game even emphasised their back to basics "boots on the ground" philosophy as a selling point.

Battlefront 2 already exists if you want the type of game reflected in this trailer so I sympathise with those who wanted more.

Reply
Mark M
31/5/2018 10:20:05 am

Don't see what the issue is if it's not a simulation. Didn't see anyone losing their s**t over HZD or RotTR (two of my mostest favouritest games evar).

I really hoped I wouldn't see that silly "gammon" word on here though. It reminds me of Cyril Smith or Willie Whitelaw, which I'm not sure is the intended effect.

I'd like to think we can avoid wading into identity politics too much on Digi. It's polluting the internet.

Reply
Graeme Warrack
1/6/2018 12:23:02 pm

EA CFO Blake Jorgensen stated in relation to Battlefront "If you did a bunch of cosmetic things, you might start to violate the canon. Darth Vader in white probably doesn't make sense, versus in black. Not to mention you probably don't want Darth Vader in pink. No offense to pink, but I don't think that's right in the canon."


As a lot of people have pointed out, having female cyborgs in Native American warpaint (cultural appropriation?), dressed like an early 80's pop star and dropping at Arnhem with front line British forces during Operation Market Garden is surely equally as undesirable for the same reasons. Sim or no sim. Plus most sensible commentators have listed that as only one of dozens of faux pas in the trailer that shatter suspension of disbelief.

Alas the games media have (a), singled out complains about the woman whilst ignoring all the other issues people pointed, and then (b) just cherry picked the dumbest tweets/comments they could find because naturally it's easier to cherry pick a weak argument (or a strawman) and smear everyone with it rather than actually have a grown up debate.

That's how it works these days.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    This section will not be visible in live published website. Below are your current settings:


    Current Number Of Columns are = 2

    Expand Posts Area =

    Gap/Space Between Posts = 12px

    Blog Post Style = card

    Use of custom card colors instead of default colors = 1

    Blog Post Card Background Color = current color

    Blog Post Card Shadow Color = current color

    Blog Post Card Border Color = current color

    Publish the website and visit your blog page to see the results

    Picture
    Support Me on Ko-fi
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    RSS Feed Widget
    Picture

    Picture
    Tweets by @mrbiffo
    Picture
    Follow us on The Facebook

    Picture

    Archives

    December 2022
    May 2022
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    November 2020
    September 2020
    July 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014


    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • MAIN PAGE
  • Features
  • Videos
  • Game Reviews
  • FAQ