What Can Ride Along 2 Tell Us About the Games Industry
I know, I know. Another article about sexism, I'm as tired of it as you are but having just seen Ride Along 2 I was struck by a wave of inspiration. I found it surprisingly relevant to many recent events in the video game industry regarding censorship and representation. It got me thinking just to what extent Video Games are scapegoated and vilified as the cultural representative of "offensive" violence and sexism, while the film and music industries can do whatever the hel they want with not even a squeak of protest from the majority of people. You may not find any new arguments in this article, but perhaps a different angle to the most obvious of arguments that some people just cannot seem to accept. I'll press on anyway and I'll try not to use too many buzzwords.
I feel like open-minded people often realise they can be offended by something yet also enjoy it. Human Centipede 3 is my ultimate example, purposely sickening but a work of artistic genius that accomplishes everything it set out to do. The same can be applied to Ride Along 2. I thoroughly enjoyed the film (at the very least I enjoyed it a lot more than the first Ride Along) but it was undeniably offensive and insulting to the viewers intelligence. Any complaint ever brought forward against the depiction of women in video games is present in this movie tenfold...
...but let us start with the films depiction of video games themselves. The main protagonist Ben is a video game fanatic. In the first Ride Along we are introduced to him whilst he is playing a Call of Duty-esque game. This is merely a grotesque CGI approximation of a video game though, and looks like a Playstation 1 era cutscene rather than actual gameplay. In any case, Ben's love for video games serves him well as an aspiring police officer as he now knows the exact model of gun someone has, just by hearing it fire. It would have been nice to have a reference to an actual game in there, such as the Battlefield series with its excellent sound design...It may still have been too far however because although the Battlefield sound designers use real guns as a reference for their sounds, in the end, the sounds are still designed using a mixture of microphone placements and post production.
Then there's the inevitable Grand Theft Auto-esque game Ben plays in Ride Along 2. This allowed him to become an incredibly skilled getaway driver by pretending he was playing the same game later in the film, even though the game required a controller and the car was...a car. Ride Along 2's version of Grand Theft Auto also included the elusive "score" at the top right for killing people, destroying things and presumably sleeping with prostitutes. I have still never found the ability to see this score in the options menu of any GTA but apparently it exists.
Both of the references above perpetuate a common criticism of video games: that they can teach someone to perform some sort of action that was seen within the game. Video games are an amazing teaching tool, yes, In terms of gaining knowledge and stimulating your mind. But very few video games are released under the pretence that they can teach you to perform actions like shooting and driving. It's not even that these elements of the film weren't funny, they're just another example of the perception of video games being skewed by other forms of media. I like to think that if the writers truly cared about video games, they would have tried to give an accurate representation of them.
Secondly, I'd like to take a look at Ride Along's representation of women and how people only seem to give a crap about semi-naked women when they're in video games. The creators of both films made sure that the viewer was accosted with T&A from start to finish. The biggest offense is Ben's girlfriend. She doesn't seem to have a job and she spends her time sat at home in her underwear wondering when Ben will be home so they can have sex. She frequently texts and calls him to let him know that she's horny so he should come home soon. Any creative or critical thought she has seems to go towards what skimpy outfit she will wear for Ben next.
Olivia Munn plays a female police officer in Ride Along 2. While at first she seems a fairly good example of a strong female character, putting Ben in a pressure point death grip for using her computer without asking, soon she's putting her real skills to use as she creates a distraction by seducing the antagonist. She doesn't do this with her charm, she does it by making sure her boobs are as visible as possible, walking straight up to him and asking him to dance. Dancing with a girl gives you permission to grab her arse too of course, so he goes for it.
I don't know if there are any male extras in the film. Either way, the female extras are all wearing some skimpy outfit or other. Ride Along 2 has the advantage of being set in Miami so it's understandable that the women are in bikinis, soaking up the sun...but hold on! Is that extra breaking the 4th wall to give me, the viewer, a striptease while the camera is an inch away from her butt, pointing up at her. She is suggestively looking down, straight in to the camera. That is not an establishing shot, that's pure sexploitation.
By now you might be wondering: what makes my criticisms of Ride Along any different from a certain feminist video series' take on depiction of women in video games? Do I have a problem with nudity and sex in films? Actually no, I don't have a problem with it at all, in fact, as is rather typical of an adult male I quite enjoy seeing the odd naked lady from time to time. But now comes the punchline...these films are rated 12A. (PG-13)
That is fucking disgraceful.
Even as someone whose favourite film as a 6-year-old was Aliens, I can safely say that the amount of sexual content in this film that should 100% not be shown to children is outstanding. The depravity of the film goes beyond that though, just like the horrifying music industry that markets glorified strippers like Nicki Minaj to children, this film is clearly heavily marketed for and aimed at young teenagers. This is through its use of references to things like mobile phones and ringtones and the general juvenile way it handles most of its aspects including the fake video games that Ben plays. Jesus Christ, I could turn this article in to a whole series on double standards between video games and other industries. Think how many film trailers you've seen recently that have a few seconds of a woman in her underwear walking away from the camera for no other reason than to tell men: "look, there are semi naked women in this movie."
But games are worse right? Surely games are aimed more at kids and therefore the rampant censorship in video games is justified, right? Well let's have a look at some games censored or criticised because of their sexual content and what their legal age requirements are:
Dead or Alive Xtreme - Mature 17+
Fire Emblem: Fates - C 15+ in Japan
Xenoblade Chronicles X - C 15+ in Japan
Blade and Soul - 18+ in Korea
Criminal Girls - Mature 17+
Mass Effect - Mature 17+
Grand Theft Auto - Mature 17+
Drakengard - Mature 17+
...and on and on ad infinitum. So there we have it, it's completely ok for a 12-year-old to watch a film featuring a woman in a kinky cop outfit. Whose sole character trait is that she's always horny. Whose sole purpose in the film is to be ogled at by the audience. But it's not ok for that same 12-year-old to change the breast size of their character in Xenoblade Chronicles X (and it's certainly not ok if they live outside of Japan) This double standard is ridiculously obvious to anyone with any critical thought. So why is it that this kind of content in video games is deemed more offensive or damaging than in a film or music video? I don't think we'll ever know but I don't know if these kind of articles will go away until every critic of violence and sex in video games realises just how flat their argument falls.
As for the argument about this kind of thing hampering our enjoyment of video games, yes...yes it does. What better example than the original Drakengard for the Playstation 2. Drakengard is one of my favourite series but the Western version of the first installment is butchered beyond comprehension. This game has incest, paedophilia, cannibalism and evil, giant, flying, naked babies that cry when you kill them. Which of these do you think was censored for Western audiences? Right, Incest and Paedophilia. and because these things are really relevant to the characters and the plot, it's a bit of chore for Western audiences to figure out the often nonsensical dialogue and story as massive chunks of it were either cut out or brushed over in the translation. This can easily be compared to the recent censorship of the lesbian sup-plot of Fire Emblem: Fates and this kind of censorship is obviously going to affect the output of future games by any and all in the video game industry as we've seen. It's needless censorship of games without the companies even being forced to do so. It stifles creativity by discouraging exploration of any subject matter deemed too offensive. Also, it discourages publishers from even bothering to release certain games in the West as we saw with Dead or Alive Xtreme 3.
Ride Along 2 was one of the most offensive, demeaning and insulting films I have ever seen and kids younger than 12 can go see it if accompanied by an adult. If anything was censored from the film to achieve its rating it must have been some seriously sickening A Serbian Film-style stuff. So, what does Ride Along 2 tell us about the games industry? It tells us that among all forms of media, video games are the most tame and inoffensive, especially when compared to the film and music industry which in my opinion, purposely targets children with sexualised content and barely anyone has a word to say about it. It tells us that any critic of the depiction of women in video games is completely deluded. The bottom line has to be that video games are still thought of as for children despite their ratings which have now ceased to have any meaning. Even this Christan review site gave Ride Along 2 a positive review and while they did mention the sexual content, seemed more concerned with the amount of times the lord's name was taken in vain than how 12-year-old boys may now think that a girlfriend is someone who waits at home for you all day in their underwear.
This may be the anti-American in me talking, but I feel like half of the US finds anything to do with sex ultra offensive and the other half seem to revel in this sort of juvenile American Pie-style humour and sexism. Here in the UK we are kind of caught in the middle of the moral outrage in the US and the extreme politeness of Japan, not wanting to offend. We don't really give a shit, just give us the creative content, uncensored, as it was envisioned by its creator (and I'm sure most sane Americans feel the same.) Media critics need to do the right thing and critique the real bad depictions of women out there. Stop disregarding phenomenal female characters like Lara Croft because her fully clothed butt happens to be on the screen or bikini clad women in games made specifically for adults and start fighting against the money-driven, purposeful targeting of teenagers (and even younger) by using sexploitation or shallow female characters. Ride Along 1&2 are an absolute disgrace and both the men and women involved in it should be ashamed of themselves...It's a really enjoyable movie though, I'd recommend it.