#character representation

GENDERWRECKED plays on the Western understanding of social differences, specifically regarding the Western gender and sex system. Gender and sex system refers to norms and institutional patterns based on perceived biological differences; Western culture and the cultures it has influenced and/or colonized assume that there are only two sexes, male and female, and two corresponding genders, man and woman (Harbison & Began, 2007). The term transgender or trans as used in this analysis refers to individuals that subvert or otherwise transgress the Western gender and sex system, by transitioning or existing between or outside the male/female binary (Shelley, 2007). In terms of societal differences, Hall (1997) outlines four main accounts of why differences matter: meaning is constructed through differences or binary opposites, meaning is constructed through dialogue with ‘the Other’, culture is made up of orders of differences, and ‘the Other’ is essential to understanding ‘the Self’. GENDERWRECKED very openly ponders the question: what is “the meaning of GENDER”? In response, this analysis asks, how does this exploration of differences in gender identity interact with discourses around racial and ethnic identity?

People of color, especially Black men, are often characterized as monstrous and animalistic: the binary opposite of the civilized and proper White man (Stecopoulos, 2007). GENDERWRECKED’s portrayal of ‘the Other’ as literal monsters and beasts may reinforce these discourses and stereotypes of ‘the jungle savage’. Even the player is explicitly told that she is also a monster; the only way to progress and finish the game is to accept or reject the label of ‘monster’ and, by extension, transgender—there is no choice to play as human or cisgender. As Leonard (2003) says, “games reveal [W]hite supremacy in the form of both contempt and desire”. In GENDERWRECKED, the contempt is in presenting ‘the Other’ (in this case, transgender people of color) as nonhuman and monstrous, with oozing black eyes and sharp, jagged teeth; while the desire is reflected in the player herself being a monster and then being encouraged to kiss and passionately make out with monsters that she meets on her journey—even those without a mouth. These representations evoke the White desire to ‘try on’ or ‘try out’ the experiences of people of color: a spectacle of ‘the Other’. However, since GENDERWRECKED assumes its player is transgender or otherwise gender non-conforming from the beginning of the game, the connotations of becoming or indulging in ‘the Other’ is subtly played upon, but still does not feel entirely subverted, since the characters are still horrific monsters that barely resemble living humans.

Video games offer opportunities to indulge in and try on experiences and bodies of ‘the Other’ in a way similar to minstrelsy and sex tourism, except that it bypasses any consequences or costs generally associated with those activities (Leonard, 2003). GENDERWRECKED’s narrative structure is reminiscent of other video games that have the player dominate and occupy a virtual space. During gameplay, the player interacts with characters tied to specific locations, kisses, talks, and/or fights with them, then moves on to the next monster and location. Though GENDERWRECKED is set in a fictional transgender-utopian world, it is not immune to these real world cultural contexts and biases. A video game’s world is artificially constructed, they are complex sites of cultural practice and significance (Murray, 2017). Even with its in-depth representations of transgender experiences, it is still only a subversion of a White and Western understanding of gender and sex. GENDERWRECKED cannot shrug its White colonialist perspective of ‘discovery’, thus potentially erasing the experiences of Indigenous and other non-Western gender and sex systems, as well as erasing the active role of gender in systemic racism. Think of the role of White women in chattel slavery and segregation, especially in relation to Black men—think of Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old Black boy lynched for ‘offending’ a White woman—it becomes clear that the intertwined relationships of gender and race are far more complex than the game presents it as. GENDERWRECKED’s idea of utopia is one where arbitrarily made social categories of race and ethnicity do not exist, but gender—which is just as arbitrarily constructed—still does. 

The narrative attempts to subvert racist discourses by presenting the characters Christine (this character’s name is player determined, Christine is the name tied to the character’s in-game sprites), Fanny, and Mark in a flashback, in which their human forms are shown to have features typically associated with people of color, such as dark skin, dreadlocks, or broad noses. Paradoxically, declaring racial diversity can signify a culture of Whiteness, specifically a brand of ‘White corporate America’ (Ward, 2008). GENDERWRECKED’s representation of people of color ultimately feels insincere and an act of tokenism, especially since Christine, Fanny, and Mark all lose their faces and thus racial identities when transformed and fully transitioned into monsters—their genders stay perfectly intact, though. It is also worth mentioning that all of these characters declare their experiences with gender and transitioning in conversation as integral parts of their identity, but they make no mention of their racial or ethnic identities. LGBT people of color face oppression as both a gender/sex minority and a racial minority (Worthen, 2018), the erasure of race in a post-bigotry world in a game about finding meaning in identity and community is a dismissal of these intersecting and sometimes lateral oppressions.

Fanny’s characterization and story in particular does manage to tie race and gender in his/her identity, but again, he only explicitly references his gender and never his Blackness. Her moon theme, her gender waxing and waning between wolf and woman, mirrors the contradicting stereotypes of Black people—aggressive and sexual, but childlike and primitive at the same time (Leonard, 2003). He is both terrifying and desirable; she is ‘the Other’ embodied for the player to consume. Fanny is also one of three characters that can reject the player’s request for a kiss and will definitely reject the player if she fails to solve his riddles about the moon. This can be interpreted as a demand to acknowledge her full identity as a (Black) woman and wolf, which shifts constantly in cycles, just like the moon.

According to Hall (1997), one of the key accounts of why difference matters is that meaning can only be constructed through dialogue with the other. Larry, a giant sun-like fireball monster, acknowledges this particular ‘meaning of gender’ by saying “I THINK [GENDER IS] SOMETHING THAT HAPPENS BETWEEN PEOPLE.” For context, Larry is one of three celestial monsters that orbit one another—to Larry, its gender only exists through the gravity of its relationships to others and to the player. It begs the player to be intimate with it, saying “GET CLOSE TO ME SO I CAN BE CLOSER TO MYSELF” and “I NEED TO LEARN THE WAY OF BEING WITH OTHERS TO KNOW WHAT'S SPECIAL ABOUT MYSELF”, mirroring yet another account of difference: understanding ‘the Self’ through ‘the Other’. Like Fanny, this particular dialogue reflects discourses about race and ethnicity, in that “a shared culture of meanings” (Hall, 2013) builds collective identity, a shared language. Racial and ethnic identities are constructed in the same way, through interacting with other people in the same in-group and comparing differences with an out-group.

Hall (1997) also states that though binaries can be useful in understanding differences in meanings, binaries are often reductive and uneven in terms of power, e.g., man/woman, straight/gay, Black/White, abled/disabled, etc. These binaries may lead to societal resentment of those who do not align to these set categories. In a flashback, Mark remarks that he can become a father and have children in this new, post-transphobia world, now that ‘they’ (the bigots and oppressors) are gone. He says, “I never thought I wanted kids. But I think I just didn’t want to be a mother” and mentions ‘them’ using the term ‘biological’ as a weapon, as is common in transphobic discourses, which typically reduces gender to an innate and unchanging trait decided by genitalia at birth and other biological characteristics. Now that the societal binary of male/female and father/mother have disappeared, Mark feels more comfortable in “bring[ing] new life into the world” as a dad, but still rejecting his uterus and making non-biological meat-children instead. This type of binary bioessentialism is present in racist discourses as well, in that ‘common sense’ notions of race include the belief that certain behaviors and cultures are inherent to biology and that differences are profound and unalterable (Monson, 2012). As mentioned previously, racism and sexism regularly work hand-in-hand in upholding White supremacy and gender hegemonies; Mark’s experience of oppressors using ‘biological facts’ as a weapon evokes the experiences of both transgender athletes and athletes of color, especially Black women. ‘Biological facts’ are used to discriminate against transgender athletes and athletes of color, removing them from participation in sport or demanding that any accolades or titles be stripped in the name of ‘fairness’. This is not to say that the entire field of biology is a farce—just that it can be used and has been used as a tool of discrimination and oppression: eugenics and phrenology were once considered biological sciences. As Mark puts it, “It should be called “biononsense” because there’s nothing logical about it.”

At the very end of the game, the player sits down at a library desk to write a letter telling all of her new monster friends what she’s learned about the meaning of gender on her quest. She can choose one of three closing lines:

1. "maybe GENDER only exists when people are together."

2. "maybe understanding GENDER means feeling like you belong somewhere."

3. "maybe GENDER is too complicated for any one of us to understand."

These accounts of gender all reflect what Hall (1997) says about the meaning of any representation—that there is no true meaning, since meaning floats and cannot be exactly pinpointed to any single idea, but at the same time, meaning is only constructed through differences and dialogue with another person through a shared language. GENDERWRECKED’s closing thoughts on gender is loosely applicable to other constructed dimensions of difference such as racial and ethnic identities.

Gender, ultimately, is a societal construction that is interpreted on an individual level. Therefore, it could be anything and nothing at all, simultaneously. It can be wolf, dad, or even as Phil says, “a flickering neon VACANCY sign”. Race and ethnicity is also socially constructed, but categories feel more rigid, even though they are also based on perceived differences in physical appearance, interpreted on an individual level. What does it mean to be Swedish—or Latine, Filipino, or Blasian? There is not one single or correct way to be a certain race or ethnicity, racial and ethnic identity can be just as personal and intimate as gender identity can be.

GENDERWRECKED is a fascinating look into the transgender experience, but with its narrative structure and narrow subversions, it ends up being a game about a White transgender experience. Through becoming ‘the Other’, dialogizing with ‘the Other’, comparing differences with others, a thorough dissection of the Western sex and gender binary, it explores meanings of gender—but gender and gender only, failing to account for its racial undertones in presenting marginalized peoples as monstrous and presenting the world as something to conquer and discover in a quest: a Manifest Destiny for transgender self-introspection. There are some moments of recognition of a transgender experience of color, but these are only interpretations and not explicit within the narrative. A character’s facial features, hair texture, and skin color are not the only parts of representing a person of color. In GENDERWRECKED, these representations of people of color are non-essential and surface level to the actual narrative; they do not read as authentic or genuine trans people of color. While flawed, GENDERWRECKED is still a valuable representation of transgender experiences and lives—just not an intersectional one.

References

Aceae, Ryan Rose, and Robertson, Heather. GENDERWRECKED. Gendervamp. PC/Mac/Linux. 2017.

Hall, Stuart. “The spectacle of the other.” Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices 7 (1997).

Hall, Stuart. “The work of representation.”  In Representations. 2013. Hall, Stuart, Evans, Jessica & Nixon, Sean. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Harbison, Jill M., and Beggan, James K. “Sex/gender system,” in International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities. 2007. London: Taylor & Francis Group. Accessed October 31, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Leonard, David. “Live in your world, play in ours: Race, video games, and consuming the other.” Studies in media & information literacy education 3, no. 4 (2003): 1-9. https://scholar.archive.org/work/vemmv73ns5gapaeuonvgdwl6ce/access/wayback/http://mediastudies.viu.ca/dougstetar/courses/medi265/resources/articles/Leonard_LiveinYourWorld.pdf 

Monson, Melissa J. “Race-based fantasy realm: Essentialism in the World of Warcraft.” Games and Culture 7, no. 1 (2012): 48-71

Murray, Soraya. “The Landscapes of Games as Ideology.” In On video games: The visual politics of race, gender and space. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017.

Shelly, Chris. “Transgender,” in International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities. 2007. London: Taylor & Francis Group. Accessed October 31, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Stecopoulos, Harry. “Race and Ethnicity,” in International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities. 2007. London: Taylor & Francis Group. Accessed October 31, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Ward, Jane. “White normativity: The cultural dimensions of whiteness in a racially diverse LGBT organization.” Sociological Perspectives 51, no. 3 (2008): 563-586.