Your Mistake Was to Underestimate My Power

This was going to be about Yume Nikki, but then something happened.  I played the demo for Bayonetta 2, and then other people played the demo for Bayonetta 2.  From there a discussion began, fueled by incoming reviews, and now it seems like a lot of people want to talk about Bayonetta.  I also want to talk about Bayonetta.

So let's talk about Bayonetta.

A Modern Witch

Oh!  If you don't know who Bayonetta is, go play Bayonetta.  Depending on when you're reading this, there may be a shiny new version out for Wii U that's getting rave reviews.  And honestly, I couldn't give her a good summary if I wanted to.  The reasons for this will become clear as we go, but for now, seriously just play Bayonetta.  It's an incredible game and well worth your money.

We all on the same page now?  Good.

Anyway, as I was about to say, there are a lot of divisive characters across the medium of video games.  "Love 'em or hate 'em" types you see as the subject of massive debates on forums.  Recently the topic has turned to Bayonetta, and how people feel about her.  Is she simply an empty shell of indulgent eye-candy pandering to the basest hormonal reactions of a traditionally male audience, or does her aggressively-open sexuality represent something more liberating, even empowering?  I obviously can't speak to whether or not she's empowering for female gamers, but I want to throw my hat in and say that I do consider her a progressive figure.

So yeah, let's talk about that Polygon review that's had Bayonetta fans up in arms lately.  In it, Mr. Arthur Gies gives Bayonetta 2 a scathing...um...7.5.  Okay, that on its own isn't terrible, except for the fact that the review itself implies almost the entire missing 2.5 is on account of Bayonetta's portrayal.  It's more or less what you'd expect.  She wears a skin-tight outfit, her clothes fly off when she attacks, the camera does a lot of loving pans across her body, etc etc.  And the thing is...yes, these are all true.  However, I can't help but feel this is an incredibly surface-level reading.  I don't blame Mr. Gies.  It's rare that a game character comes along with enough nuance that they have a point to miss, but yeah, he missed the point.  He missed the point so hard he triggered Witch Time.

There's a fine line between fighting against the objectification of women and simply demonizing female sexuality.   It's not a solid line, either.  A lot of debate when it comes to feminist theory centers around what makes a sexual portrayal of a woman "okay."  Setting aside how depressing it is that this is even something we need to debate in detail, in cases like Bayonetta's the question usually comes down to agency.  Does she have agency?  Is she in control of her sexuality?  Is what she's doing deliberate?  Is she audience seeing her as she wants to be seen?

And this, right here, is what makes Bayonetta interesting.  Unlike so many video game heroines who've grabbed at the eye from box covers across the ages, Bayonetta displays full agency over her own sexuality.  She teases deliberately.  She moves with purpose, aware of both the audience and the NPCs watching her.

You want an example?  Of course you do.

Take a look at how the demo to Bayonetta 2 opens.  One of the first shots we see is a tight close-up on Bayonetta's ass.  I'll admit, when I first saw this, I actually rolled my eyes a bit.  I'd gone through the first Bayonetta seeing the character as a queen of personal agency, and here the game was throwing me a gratuitous ass-shot out of nowhere with no context.

But pay attention to this shot.

Yes, please PAY CLOSE ATTENTION to this shot.

Within half a second, Bayonetta's hands appear at her sides.  They move slowly, deliberately up her body and the camera follows them.  Her hands disappear into her outfit for a second and then...POP!  Handguns!  Now, did you see what happened, there?  Bayonetta's hands guided the camera up.  She was in control of the camera the entire time.

"That's a hell of a stretch."

Not really.  Bayonetta gives winks and asides to the camera all the time in the first game.  Several of her special moves involve her grabbing control of the camera and striking a pose.  If she's not directly controlling the camera, you at least get the sense that the camera and her have made an arrangement, and you're not seeing anything she doesn't explicitly want you to see.

For reference, let's look at an example from the opposite...xtreme.

Yeah, I'm going there.

Dead or Alive Xtreme is a sad, pandering mess where a bunch of ladies in bikinis roll around in various locales for no reason and sometimes play terrible minigames.  This series is bad and we all know it's bad.  It's gross and we all know it's gross.   But what's the real issue here?  What separates this from Bayonetta?  (Aside from one having actual gameplay depth, I mean.)

The difference is that the sexiness of DoAX is apropos of nothing.  These ladies aren't trying to seduce or tease anyone.  They're not even ostensibly trying to be sexy at all.  Nearly all the shots are of them alone, simply lounging, and the player takes on a voyeur perspective as the ladies proceed to...do things while wearing bikinis.

 

Uguu~

These women aren't in control of their sexuality.  They seem barely aware of their sexuality.  They seem barely aware of anything, actually!  They literally just roll around and the player is given full control of the camera to ogle them.  Having watched some gameplay, not once did I get the sense that any of the characters were actually trying to seduce anyone.  This is just...their natural state I guess.  Ironically, if they'd taken it a step further and literally turned it into the lesbian dating sim it kinda half-pretends to be at times, it would actually be much more progressive.  At least the sexuality would be active and inspired by the women themselves.

Eugh!  Get me out of here.

Ah, much better.

So yeah, if DoAX is the standard model of sexualizing women in games (or an absurdly extreme example of same), Bayonetta represents a new model.  She's active, deliberate, and in-control.  She's sexy by her own design, and what the audience sees of her, she wants them to see.  Is Bayonetta pitch-perfect about this the entire way through?  Of course not, and I doubt Bayonetta 2 is either, but the tone of the work is so overwhelmingly positive.  I honestly can't think of another female character in a video game who portrays sexuality in such a refreshingly power-retaining way.  For her uniqueness alone, I think Bayonetta's a valuable and incredibly progressive character.

"But, if a player is controlling her, how does she have agency?"

There's actually a fascinating answer to that.  I don't have a link handy and it may well no longer exist, but for a while Hideki Kamiya, the director of the first Bayonetta, was doing a series of Let's Play videos wherein he played his own game and discussed some design decisions.  The whole thing was great and really enlightening on the thought process that goes into designing a character-action game, but what caught my attention was when he pointed out what happens if you make Bayonetta shoot a wall.

If you stand still and have Bayonetta fire full-auto at a wall, any wall, she'll start to draw little symbols with the bullet holes.  She'll draw hearts, butterflies, and even her own initial "B."  Kamiya said that this was to express that every action Bayonetta makes is deliberate, even if the player isn't acting deliberately.  Think about that for a second.  Even when the player is uselessly firing at a wall, Bayonetta isn't.  That she "has a plan for every bullet she fires" is along the lines of how Kamiya described it.

Sexual politics aside, if that's not the raddest thing you've heard today, I don't know what to tell you.  But yeah, she has agency independent of the player built right into the mechanics of the game.  Fucking awesome.

"You know, it's funny you bring up Kamiya, because if you think about it..."

Oh, no.

"...she's just a fictional character, so..."

Please, not this argument.

"...Bayonetta has no real agency.  She's always under the control of her author, right?  A man is still dictating her actions."

Okay, I hear this a lot and I really, really hate this line of logic for a whole host of reasons.  First and foremost, it pretty much invalidates 90% of character analysis.  If we can't view characters as people and judge their actions by the logic of the world they inhabit...what's even the point of fiction?  It's a hard-reverse of the standard "Death of the Author," making the intent of the artist the most important thing.  Only, it's not even really authorial intent, but perceived authorial intent based on things like the gender of the person creating the work.  This is the reason prioritizing authorial intent doesn't even work, because outside of very rare circumstances you kind of have to guess.  Most artists don't even understand their own work, after all.

Beyond that, if you take this reasoning much further you start getting into really gross arguments about who's "allowed" to write certain things, and who's allowed to decide who's allowed and who's allowed to decide who's allowed to decide who's allowed.  Yes, societal privilege is a thing and there need to be checks and balances in place to keep authors from getting too complacent in vomiting stereotypes willy-nilly, but this is entirely the wrong angle to come at that problem.

"Also, Bayonetta's character designer was a woman."

You know, I didn't even want to mention that, because it shouldn't matter.  But yes, it's true, Bayonetta's costume and design were created by a woman. 

 If anything, the modeling team made her 

proportions more reasonable.

What I will say is that this is what makes authorial intent particularly impossible to discern in something as collaborative as a AAA video game.  Bayonetta is a character "created by a man," but what about the woman who designed her look?  What about the woman who provided her voice?  What about the woman who did her motion capture?  What about the men and women who created her world?  How much authorship do they have?  Bayonetta didn't spring from Hideki Kamiya's forehead fully-formed, after all.

So yeah, that's the long and the short of my feelings on Bayonetta.  She's a character unlike just about any other in video games, so I'm not surprised so many people seem torn on what to make of her.  As that Polygon review shows, she doesn't work if you reduce her to a series of bullet points.  She wears a skin-tight outfit.  She gyrates.  She teases the camera.  On paper, she's the worst female protagonist you could imagine for a modern game, but through care and clever craft, she comes out as one of the best.

Look, I'd love to see more female protagonists in games that aren't sexualized at all, irregardless of agency.  I don't think the world needs (nor deserves) another Bayonetta, but I'm happy for the one we have and wouldn't trade her for anything else.

And so, Witch Time has ended.  Barring any further interruptions, I should be on-track to covering Yume Nikki next.  So stay tuned to see what topic distracts me next!