Tropes vs. Men in Videogames

Hypermasculinity: Drake, Gerald Butler, Joel, and Sam

(Here's a bit of semi-satire for you all.) Representations of women in media and their effects in society seems to be a cool thing to write about when discussing popular culture. With academics writing lengthy articles, endless video commentaries and Anita Sarkeseean's popular series Tropes vs. Women inVideogames taking the recent spotlight, it seems everyone, including my colleagues over at Pop Trends  Otaku K and Random V, are writing about representations of women in media. I wanted to take a different approach to this topic and explore the other gender. Let's call this a study on masculinism. Now, it would be easy enough to take the Sarkeesian approach and say "males are misrepresented" and leave it at that, but instead let us go a step further and discuss how these representations of men affects both men and women.
 

The depiction of the "cool" manly man: Duke Nukem

I don't think we need too much of an explanation of HOW men are represented in media. From the most popular [1] videogames [2] to movies to [3] TV shows, male protagonists are represented largely as the cool, ruggedly handsome-yet-somehow-beautiful, mysterious, hypermasculine hero with a traumatic past and a hyperactive libido. The basic implication is obvious: media is perpetuating the image of the hypermale as the gold standard - what every man should strive to be and whom every woman should aspire to serve as trophy. This is problematic on two levels: first, it sets men up to live up to impossible and frankly, inhuman standards, and it makes women seek the approval of individuals with what could be considered sociopathic behavior.

 

Not the depiction of a cool manly man: Lester the Unlikely

These might seem like ridiculous claims. However, let us consider how popularity is defined at various levels. The most popular kid at school isn't the best mathematician or writer - it's the captain of the football team. The most desirable guys in any university are not the STEM kids who publish and invent, it's the fraternity members from whichever frat house is the most influential in campus. As adults, we see this in who we as a society consider attractive. When growing up, the consensus between my sister's friends was that David Boreanaz (of Angel fame) was attractive, while Bill Nye the Science Guy wasn't. Now, the fairly dull, shallow, and monochromatic Winchester brothers seem to be a popular object of desire. In all these cases we see the glorification of personality traits such as selfishness, self-centeredness and a drive to accomplish a goal at any expense, even the wellbeing of others. We see this even in shows that are created with a mainly female audience in mind. In Sex and the City, the "desirable male", Mr. Big, is portrayed as a self centered egotist who puts his own wants before Carrie's and who is willing to run for the hills because HE doesn't feel like doing... whatever. And so, what we see is a form of self-reinforcing feedback loop where men look up to and women desire, deeply flawed hypermasculine characters because this is what is glorified in the media, but at the same time these characters are made protagonists because they are what people look up to. 

Of course, it can easily be argued that these hypermasculine superflawed "bad boys" are the object of desire in female-centric media because of the female power fantasy of "dominating the bad boy", but that's something we can explore some other time.

 [1] This year the role falls on The Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite, Grand Theft Auto V, and Assassin's Creed IV.

[2] Think about Star Trek Into the Darkness, Man of Steel, Iron Man 3, Fast and Furious 6, Olympus has Fallen, or The Great Gatsby just to get started.

[3] My limited conversations about TV has me convinced that Agents of Shield, Green Arrow, and Supernatural are among the most popular this year.