Victim of Culture

Motivating the men of media

With the video game press show E3 upon us, I find myself in a deluge of game trailers.  Certainly they have improved over the years, as many now rival the best Hollywood film trailers.  But one thing stuck out to me watching a few today—they were all about men going militaristic over women.

Consider the very impressive Splinter Cell Conviction trailer.  Sam’s daughter is murdered and how does he respond?  Apparently by taking on the US government and killing about a million people—mostly by snapping their necks.  In Alan Wake the lead character responds to the disappearance of his significant other by apparently becoming an action hero battling the forces of darkness (literally).  The nagging question for me was how is this at all realistic?

Films and video games have been doing this for years.  Woman dies or disappears and man goes on crazed killing spree until he can get her back or enact revenge.  It makes for quick, easy, and mindless motivation in media.  Men are the protectors of women and when they fail they go ballistic to reassert their manhood.  But it isn’t true.

When someone is murdered or kidnapped people do not load up a shotgun and go through town guns blazing.  No, they fall into grief and despair.  At best, they channel their energy into a response similar to that of Fred Goldman, father of the slain Ron Goldman in the O.J. Simpson case.  They hound the police and FBI to investigate or even invest their personal time and money into the investigation, but they do not go around shooting people.

Of course, video games aren’t immune to this either.  It was used as the motivation for the second Bourne film recently.  And yes, a man falling into grief makes for a boring video game, but then no one said it had to use this plot device.  Surely there’s other motivations in the world than women?  I mean, just look at Super Mario…oh, wait, never mind.

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