{"id":57,"date":"2019-04-28T17:27:23","date_gmt":"2019-04-28T21:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/eoy1\/?p=57"},"modified":"2019-04-28T17:27:23","modified_gmt":"2019-04-28T21:27:23","slug":"gaming-avatars-the-raced-classed-and-gendered-nature-of-gta5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/eoy1\/2-0-minis\/gaming-avatars-the-raced-classed-and-gendered-nature-of-gta5\/","title":{"rendered":"Gaming & Avatars: The Raced, Classed, and Gendered Nature of GTA5"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve never played (or, even, considered<\/em> playing) GTA, despite the fact that it\u2019s the highest grossing videogame in world history. I wanted to figure out why I had never had the urge to play GTA, so I turned to Rockstar Game\u2019s branding of GTA5 to see who, exactly, they were marketing to. What I found was that they were, clearly, marketing to men. In every<\/em> official GTA5 trailer, women were either excluded or included only insofar as they fit a hyper-sexualized, hyper-critical stereotype of what women embody.<\/p>\n

Although the videogame, undoubtedly, dismisses and dehumanizes all women, the ways in which it does this seemed to differ along racial (and economic) lines. Wealthier, whiter women were featured in \u201cbickering\u201d scenes where they embodied the hysterical, needy\/nagging wife stereotype. In one trailer a white, woman screams, \u201cI hate you\u201d at Michael and, in another scene the frivolity of her hatred is illustrated by the fact that she screams \u201cStop it. You\u2019re ruining my yoga\u201d (7:54), as if her anger about his verbal and physical abuse is actually only a silly, superficial argument about interfering with her low-key problematic, leisure activities.<\/p>\n

Both similarly and dissimilarly, Black women filled stereotypes like the ABM (\u201cangry black woman\u201d) that were distinctly tied to their Black<\/em> femininity. They were primarily portrayed stripping and emasculating Black men, like Franklin, by screaming things like, \u201cYou ain\u2019t changing,\u201d an accusation that is easily (mis)read as \u201coverreacting\u201d by viewers and players who are, naturally, attuned to the emotions of their avatar (Franklin). Since the game is centered around three, quote-un-quote \u201cdiverse\u201d men<\/em> (Michael, Franklin, and Trevor) the viewer\/player is always encouraged, like the camera, to take their point-of-view. As a player you inhabit, or adopt, the body and personality of your avatar, acting vicariously or \u2013 as the trailer puts it \u201cvoyeuristically\u201d \u2013 through their body. This can be seen as both a freedom and an unfreedom because, in an open-world game you, hypothetically, choose what you and your avatar do, but you\u2019re also constrained to the hyper-masculine personality and male-presenting body that GTA provides you. Although these men are seen hitting and assaulting the women of San Andres, we \u2013 as viewers and players \u2013 are primed to downplay the implications of these actions, because WE are the ones doing the hitting and assaulting, and it is our story\/personality, not the story or personality of these secondary characters, that we see and are, thereby, primed to relate to.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, although the game features two white, male leads, the racial and cultural coding of Los Santos (and the fact that they work in the underbelly of the city) make their actions seem more connected to inner-city, immigrant communities, than their own overwhelmingly white<\/em> residencies. Los Santos is an obvious allusion to Los Angeles, a connection that is made even more<\/em> explicit through the Vinewood (read Hollywood) sign we see in this \u201cimaginary\u201d city. This allusion automatically connects the violence associated with Los Santos to Latinx\/Spanish-speaking communities, even as we see that violence enacted by Franklin and the two, white male leads.<\/p>\n

This implicit racism and classism is also embedded in the set-up and soundtrack of the movie. The backstory for GTA5 is that Michael (the former, singular protagonist of the franchise) wants to \u201cretire\u201d from a life of crime to – as he puts it \u2013 be a good man, a family<\/em> man. Naturally, Michael doesn\u2019t succeed because the game requires that players engage in illicit, even, immoral activities. But, it\u2019s interesting that the two new<\/em> characters, Franklin and Trevor, are the ones who, ostensibly, drag Michael back to the streets. Franklin, a lower-class Black man, and Trevor, a lower-class white man, are both less privileged than Michael. So, it seems that, while we might believe that Michael is \u201credeemable\u201d (after all he tried <\/em>to be a \u201cgood guy\u201d), the game argues that Franklin and Trevor will always be \u201cbad guys\u201d and may even suck unwitting wealthier, whiter men into their unsavory activities.<\/p>\n

Their connection to the world of crime always seems like an individual choice \u2013 as opposed to a consequence of their respective race and class status. This is a theme that runs throughout the trailers for GTA5. For example, in one trailer we see a homeless man holding a sign that reads, \u201cNeed money for beer,\u201d a statement that reinforces the classist (and often racist) assumption that people experience poverty because of their own \u201cpoor\u201d life-choices (i.e. spending money on alcohol instead of more \u201csensible\u201d things). This refusal to acknowledge the structural nature of poverty goes hand-in-hand with GTA5\u2019s problematic presentation of \u201cthe city.\u201d Urban decay is juxtaposed with the sublime beauty and majesty of nature (7:18). This positions the inner-city as a place that needs escaping, rather than fixing, in much the same way that GTA5 labels the low-income, people of color (those who primarily inhabit the inner-city) – as irredeemable \u201ctragedies,\u201d rather than the natural outgrowth of an unequal, unsustainable system that could be reimagined. In Franklin\u2019s trailer, we see one Black man deride him for \u201cchoosing\u201d a life of gangbangin, while another Black man argues that \u201cGangbangin\u2019s all we got. That\u2019s our heritage.\u201d (4:40). But, both statements seem to miss the mark, either suggesting that gangbangin is an individual choice or an unavoidable, outgrowth of the fact that Black communities are totally deprived of role models. This leaves me wondering where all of the legendary Black freedom fighters, protesters, thinkers, singers, writers, and dreamers went. This second Black, man\u2019s assertion suggests that Blackness is solely defined by so-called \u201cblack-on-black crime,\u201d rather than illustrating that this violence is only part<\/em> of the story. When we define a whole people by one aspect of their struggle, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie argues in her TedTalk, we deny Franklin (and Black men like him) the multiple histories and heritages that he has to choose from, again contributing to a narrative of Black \u201cirredeemability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Race is deeply essentialized in GTA5 and signified, most prominently, through the soundscape of the game. \u201cHood Gone Love It\u201d plays during Franklin\u2019s trailer, and, despite the fact that \u201cfreedom of choice\u201d is a major selling point for GTA5, Franklin seems bound to a particular type of \u201curban\u201d branding. He is seen choosing between several, streetwear-style jackets as the narrator speaks about the ability to customize your character. But, it seems that, although the viewer can, allegedly, say whatever they want and buy whatever they want, the way <\/em>that they say what they say and the style of the thing that they buy is relatively fixed. In other words, Franklin will always speak in the street slang typically associated with the particular brand of urban, blackness that he is supposed to embody. Similarly, the soundscape serves to racially, economically, and geographically code Michael and Trevor\u2019s characters. Michael\u2019s trailer is accompanied by the familiar soundtrack of Queen, jiving well with the \u201crich,\u201d white, cosmopolitan<\/em> man he is portrayed to be, whereas Trevor\u2019s country soundtrack: \u201cAre You Sure Hank Done It this Way,\u201d screams uneducated, unsophisticated \u201chillbilly,\u201d a stereotype of lower-class \u201cwhite trash\u201d that is reflected in his vulgar speech (6:13).<\/p>\n

Last, but not least, I would argue that the very premise of the game is problematic in that it posits that \u201cghetto life\u201d is a game, something that white, wealthy players can turn on and\/or off. This, too, is achieved sonically. The upbeat soundtrack in all of the trailers reinforces the idea that the violence some people (mostly low-income, people of color) face involuntarily is a game \u2013 a pleasurable activity that can be voluntarily played by people who will never have to experience the very real PTSD that accompanies living in a space where you are constantly safeguarding your body and your property.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve never played (or, even, considered playing) GTA, despite the fact that it\u2019s the highest grossing videogame in world history. I wanted to figure out why I had never had the urge to play GTA, so I turned to Rockstar … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2-0-minis"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/eoy1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/eoy1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/eoy1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/eoy1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/eoy1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/eoy1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/eoy1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions\/58"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/eoy1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/eoy1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/eoy1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}