Bayonetta: Innovative Advertising or Sexual Harassment Training?
The widely popular video game Bayonetta has had an advertising campaign that matches the on screen sexism of the game itself. In Tokyo a large billboard in the subway invited passersby to literally strip off flyers to reveal Bayonetta naked underneath. The campaign perpetuates and encourages sexual and physical harassment against women, an epidemic in Japan (and many other countries, including the United States).
Related Links and Articles:
- High Rates of Street Harassment in Korea and Japan and Video Game Allows Subway Groping and Worse from the blog Stop Street Harassment
- Harassment on Public Transportation is No Joke from Gender Across Borders
- In Anonymous Packed Train Lurk Gropers from The Japan Times
Links to Bayonetta Billboard Images:
- Ads with flyer on body: Ad 1 and Ad 2 (it appears to be a mock up of the ad campaign)
- Ads with the flyers removed and images of the cards
- Example of screen cast of Bayonetta naked
** This video is available to be translated into other languages by volunteers like you. Please visit the subtitling page on Universal Subs and click TRANSLATE to get started. [tweetmeme]
Bayonetta: Innovative Advertising or Sexual Harassment Training Transcript
Bayonetta is a wildly popular video game that was released earlier this year in the US and late last year in Japan for the xbox 360 and playstation 3 — It sold over a million units in just four months.
First the positive things about this game, she’s a single mom…… and now the negatives.
The game stars a character named Bayonetta. Its your basic story of a shapeshifting witch dressed in skin tight leather who can transform into a giant cats, wields an small arsenal of weaponry including whips.
Clip: Bayonetta Trailer
Bayonetta: “Come On”
And of course she has lost her memoirs, there are some evil demands hordes to fight off and something about magical gem eye of the world something something and so on and so forth. Anyway that is all besides the point when it comes to this game.
She also carries with her four pistols, two of which are strapped to her high heeled boots providing the perfect opportunity to contorts her body into pornographic poses spreading her legs and flipping in the air to kill the bad guys. When she lands she does a sexy pose for the player watching (complete with the sound of camera shutters snapping)
But it gets even better, one of her strongest weapons involve her stripping off all her clothes and turning her hair into a demon weapon, did you get that, her clothes go flying off of her in order to use her hair as a weapon. Because clearly her hair couldn’t be a weapon to drag her enemies in to hell with her clothing on!
Predictably the internet is now infested with countless gamers showing off their screen captures of how they managed to get Bayonetta naked during game play) And as if the pornographic, overly sexualized animated representation isn’t bad enough – get this – she restores her power by sucking on a lollipop.
I’m not really here to discuss the overly sexualized, masterbatory adolescent male fantasy that is Bayonetta - but rather comment on part of the game’s marketing strategy.
To advertise the release of the game the marketing company placed two 6 ft long billboards in the Shinjuku Station in Toyko. This ad featured the Bayonnetta Logo and then a large rectangle space filled with small cards that passersby were enticed to peal off and take home. The cards had a lipstick kiss on the front and a photo of Bayonnetta’s gun strapped leg on the inside. Once a few of the cards were removed it was clear that there was a huge layout of a very naked image of Bayonnetta posing underneath with only her hair covering up her naughty bits. Yes, that’s right, not only is it bad enough that the game is created to and encourages players to undress her in the game play – basically it is a choose your own patriarchal adventure porno fantasy but now the advertisers are inviting passersby to physically strip her naked in the subway station.
Instead of being at least somewhat outraged by this bloggers all over the web were heralding this an example of an innovative and successful ad campaign.
Women’s bodies are constantly used in order to sell products including video games, specifically targeted to young men but this interactive ad campaign takes objectifying women to a whole other level by asking people to actively participate in doing misogyny. The ad encourages participation in physical harassment and this is especially alarming in the context of how women are treated in Japanese subways. In 2008 in Tokyo alone there were 2000 reported cases of men groping women, and that is only the amount actually reported! In another survey 64% of Japanese women have reported being groped on trains and subways. Women’s harassment is so bad that the subway system even introduced women only trains as an effort to curb the sexual harassment. Women’s only passenger cars have also been introduced in many other places such as Taiwan, Brazil, Mexico and Egypt and I’m surprised they haven’t introduced it in the United States considering the harassment women passengers face here as well.
Harassment is at such epidemic levels that they have also put up public service announcements and ad campaigns in the Japanese subway system. While there is action being taken to curb this behaviour, through women only cars and public service announcements, right next door is this bayonneta ad perpetuating and encouraging this predatory behaviour.
[...] Link: Bayonetta: Innovative Advertising or Sexual Harassment Training? (full transcript) [...]
It’s even sillier than that. Bayonetta’s clothes are made out of her hair, so even when she looks fully clothed, it’s still “only her hair covering her naughty bits”. And when her hair is being used as a weapon, it’s not being used for clothing, which gives an excuse for having her clothes disappear when she attacks.
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I’m going to have to disagree here. I thought Bayonetta was one of the most refreshing female game characters in recent memory…Dante’s inferno on the other hand, I felt was actively exploitive fo women.
Firstly, Bayonetta. Sure. She’s a sexy witch who never misses an opportunity to get into a risque pose or to do something erotic. But everything is so over the top that it becomes self-parodying. The designers *know* that games in general are mysoginistic. So they take it to a level that’s so absurd that it highlights the faults of the industry in general. Also, the character of Bayonetta owns her sexuality. She is in complete control and she’s doing it because she it amuses her, not because the male characters in the game want it. As for the player, yeah. I could see a guy getting off on this. He’d be a pretty sad bloke. For me, as a woman, this was one of the first games I’ve played where the main character was a woman and not just because I changed the sex on the character screen. It’s the first Japanese game I’ve played where the main character was a woman who was not a good princess and/or committed to nursing and flirting with the male characters <> It’s definitely the first hack and slash that I’ve played where the character was a strong, intelligent, badass interesting female.
I liked it a lot.
As for Dante’s Inferno, Thank god that didn’t sell terribly well. I was disgusted by some of the elements of Hell. The women with the snakes coming out of their vaginas, (which of course you massacre in the nastiest way possible), the damned babies that hatch out of Cleopatra’s bosom. Five hundred years after its conception, Dante’s hell is still populated with sinning adultresses and brazen harlots.
And Beatrix? The heroine who you have to save? Well, the lead artist had obviously never seen a naked woman outside of porn because she has the kind of boobs you only get with surgery. And of course, when she’s getting massacred, her clothes fall off as she falls to the ground bleeding.
I’d write EA a letter about how offensive this pile of turds is, but they’d probably revel in it given that that team is apparently populated with frat-boys.
[Reply]
Anita Reply:
May 24th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
I don’t think comparing Bayonetta with another video game that might be more exploitative of women makes your case, as an overarching statement, women are HORRIBLY represented in video games with the very, very rare exception. If Bayonetta is better than a few other games, that still does not make it okay. Also, I don’t think that Bayonetta is self-parodying and even if it is, the target audience, young men, were definitely getting off on how over sexualized she is. She was marketed and created as a sexual object specifically to appeal to that particular demographic.
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SoylentH Reply:
May 27th, 2010 at 3:35 pm
I haven’t played the game, but I glanced at a review and the creators seemed to think she was refreshingly feminist because they had a woman design how the character looks and that she was designed to look “sexy” to both men and women equally and therefore was a much more mature and responsible video game character. Or that because a woman designed her with slightly smaller breasts she is a feminist icon.
I think they’re wrong of course, because they’re still operating under the conceit that the only female characters worth caring about (or that a male audience will care about) are those that turn men on. And then “strong” female leads are typed as women who act like men. So it’s still kind of messed up. I have yet to see a “I use my sexuality to control men who are stupid sexbots” argument that really seems like a “better” man/woman dynamic. Mutual exploitation is not the same as or better than mutual admiration and respect.
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This is a great posting for its “A-ha” factor. I showed it to some of my male friends, and explained why these ads are exploitive and damaging and they were like, “Yeah, that’s really so true, Wow” like they were discovering a new primary color. Please keep up the great work.
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[...] Bayonetta: Innovative Advertising or Sexual Harassment Training | Feminist Frequency [...]
This video isn't censorship. It isn't banning plays. Feminism is discourse. Feminism is identifying problems and saying: "we can all do better." It's a hard look in the mirror.
Here is an ad campaign that encourages an audience (men) to undress a picture of a passive woman. This advertisement was placed in a subway system where real women get groped against their will.
Sometimes we need a give ourselves a hard look in the mirror.
[Reply]
I am a gamer girl, and I can not stand most gamer guys. I’ve noticed in general, that many gamer guys that I know have a bit of a misogynistic attitude towards girls, moreso than those that are not gamers. I’ve tried to explain why I find the common portrayl of females in games sexist, and I am usually met responses such as, but it’s what sells, and that I need to grow up. I have found very few games that have a positive portrayl of women that is not overly sexualized, and sadly, most of them are from the 16 bit era. Samus from metroid was one, but unfortunantly she has become very sexualized over the years.
I am also upset about what many gamer girls consider to be a strong female character. Many love the character Tifa from FFVII and claim that she is feminist simply because she fights with her fists. However, she is very sexualized in the game, wearing a mini skirt and a sports bra while having boobs so large that would give any normal woman back problems, and her entire life revolved around the main character who she is in love with, despite that he hardly shows any real interest. Now I’m not saying that Aerith or Yuffie are better examples, the Final Fantasy series itself has an issue with how it portrays it’s female characters.
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[...] Before I close, I would like to share a few stray thoughts I jotted down while walking Dr. McGonigal’s lecture: • I hadn’t heard of the sOccket project and was really glad she mentioned it • How can she be so against global poverty and not be overtly anti-capitalist? Capitalism necessitates poverty. Why, then, is she making for the WORLD BANK? • Now, I could be way off base about this as I have not seen the game itself, only the clip she showed, but the trailer for Evoke struck me as incredibly problematic. It seems to play off of many stereotypes and misconceptions that Westerners generally have of Africans; we see random shots of people walking in the hot African sun, driving older cars, all interlaced with “tribal” sounding music. The truth is we don’t know what the story of those people is – maybe they’re considered middle class in their community; maybe they’re on their way to work; maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t appreciate being described as “the world’s greatest problem.” And then, to go from bad to worse, we see a disembodied tribal mask talking in a heavy accent about how it’s YOUR DESTINY to join. Again, I could be way off base since I haven’t actually played the game, but the trailer made me not want to. • At one point, McGonigal was asked how she feels about the portrayal of women in video games. She said, very simply, “it’s getting better,” but she didn’t cite much evidence. She gave one example and then moved on. I find it odd that she didn’t mention Chell, the awesome female protagonist in Portal and Portal 2 who isn’t hypersexualized and who uses her brain to solve puzzles to survive. I do not necessarily agree with McGonigal’s notion that “it’s getting better;” that’s not to say I disagree, I just simply haven’t seen any meaningful data to suggest this. I would, however, like to take a second to link to Feminist Frequency’s short video about the game Bayonetta. [...]
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