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This is a guest post by Laura Buttrick. Laura is a game design student from Lincoln, UK. She writes on her blog Being Loquacious about feminism, sexuality, mental health issues and fandom. She was previously a game reviewer for the California Literary Review. She can be found on Twitter at @laurabuttrick
Saying that Lollipop Chainsaw, a 2012 game produced by the same guy responsible for the absolutely foul Killer Is Dead, is problematic, is a little bit like saying Page 3 is offensive. It’s an understatement, and it is a word which doesn’t fully encapsulate the complexity of just what’s wrong with it all. I’d need a fifty page power point presentation and a lecture theatre to explain with any satisfaction just what my issues with Lollipop Chainsaw are. Thankfully, Jem has kindly given me space to write about here on his blog instead. So let’s get to it.
From the outset, Lollipop Chainsaw looks like easy pickings – it’s a video game about a scantily clad cheerleader who bumps off zombies using a diamante encrusted chainsaw that has heart shapes on it. Of course I’ve got a problem with it. But it’s more nuanced than that, because… well, I really enjoyed Lollipop Chainsaw. It’s actually a brilliant game. More bizarrely, I really enjoyed the protagonist, Juliet, despite what the creators of the game tried to do to her.
Let’s get one thing clear: there is nothing wrong with Juliet. Juliet kicks some serious ass. She’s fluent in Japanese, can perform magic rituals to bring her dying boyfriend back from the brink, and can dismember, decapitate and pom-pom punch entire rooms of zombies to death. What’s wrong is the way she gets treated by others in the game, and the way the producers and designers of the game have gone out of their way to encourage the player to sexualize and objectify Juliet as much as possible. There is an achievement for looking up her skirt for over ten seconds. She has an array of ever more suggestive outfits for the player to dress her up in. Male characters who you rescue from a grisly fate reply with quips like “I never thought I’d be saved by someone with such great tits” and “Juliet, I am so going to masturbate to you tonight.” Juliet is strong, intelligent and generally fantastic, but the misogyny of others overshadows everything she does. I mean, for God’s sake, she has a Butt Attack. No, really, there is an attack Juliet can perform where she hits the zombies with her super-cute posterior. It’s eye-rolling stuff.
The opening sequence to the game slowly pans across Juliet’s sleek, semi-nude body in all its splendor, even cutting to shots of her doing some impossibly flexible yoga stretches – but don’t worry, because her super twinkly voice over confirms what we’re all hoping: it’s her birthday today and she’s eighteen! Jail bait no more! Phwoar! Let’s have a bang on those- and so on, and so forth. Juliet laments that she’s “getting sooo fat”, her little character card declares that her favourite thing is to be “told that she isn’t fat”, and while fighting zombies in the opening level she declares that she’s glad her boyfriend loves her despite “my ginormous fat butt.” But this “fat butt” allows for the glorious Butt Attack! Despite the fact she clearly isn’t fat at all! She subsists on lollipops, I’m amazed she has the energy needed to decapitate zombies left right and centre.
Okay but, why do I like her? Why am I even talking about it? It’s pretty obvious from the outset that she’s a shitty pile of stereotypes and any attempts that the producers have made at making her a parody or a commentary have fallen flat on their face because they’ve played it a little bit too straight.
Well, I’ll be blunt about it: I like Juliet because it’s pretty clear that she’s the sort of girl that the game’s producers think girls like me wouldn’t like at all. She’s a classic white beauty, she adores hot pink and she’s the head cheerleader. They’re evoking the exact kind of girls who would bully the shit out of me in school. They want all the boys to drool over her pert little behind and all the girls to sneer, deride her overexcitement in the face of a massive zombie attack, and comment about how stupid she is. Well, they can fuck the fuck off. I’m not buying into this. I support Juliet in her zombie slaughtering endeavors. Solidarity, sister. Kick them in the fucking teeth.
Despite being one of my favourite games of last year – the gameplay itself is stellar, top notch stuff – this game is not okay. Not even remotely. To quote Juliet herself, it has clearly been designed by “gross, stupid, undead douchebags” who have no idea that women and girls play video games, who think that the domain of gaming is exclusively for heterosexual, lecherous, mouth breathing basement dwelling boys and that when they release titles which amount to nothing more than ogling the behind of an eighteen year old girl no one is going to notice or pass comment. But hey, here I am, calling this shit.
But it’s one of my favourite games, right? I’m a massive fucking hypocrite because I like it? Yeah, maybe. I imagine some people will say just as much and I can’t blame them. It causes me some massive cognitive dissonance myself. But really, the game play is fun. A lot of the design is absolutely brilliant – when it comes to making games, these guys know what they’re doing. It’s just a shame that when it comes to women, their brains fall out of their heads and land splat on the prang of their penises, wobbling gelatinously in like, a totally gross kind of way.
quiteirregular 
how some women interpret parody is completely absurb. First of all Gaming industry whether you like it or not is mainly leaning towards a male audience, hence sexual appeal always brings extra cash from a specific group of people
When creators make women cower in fear and act “girly” (which in on itself is a stereotype but the gaming industry is full of stereotypes both on male and female side) some complain oh my god they diminish what women can actually do.
When creators make them strong women but sexualized for sex appeal some people end up complaining about stupid crap like mentioned in the article. WELL NEWSFLASH FOR YOU GIRL, Real life is actually much different than whatever rock you’ve been living under. There’s hundreds of guys out there who would whistle after a hot chick or simply make sexist comments. That doesn’t mean I suppot it but it happens nevertheless.
Furthermore there’s plenty of games where women are pictured basically flawless, examples would be Aya from Resident Evil series, NIna Williams from tekken, pretty much the entire female cast of Dynasty Wariors women where each and every single woman is pictured as beautiful well manered and honourful.
On the other hand in shows like animes men (well young male characters) are usually pictured as complete losers and women usuallly do whatever the hell they want to them without any worry for consequences, like slapping them, kicking them humiliating them etc. Do you hear guys complaining about things like that? not really and most complaints you will hear wil be nothing more than “wtf that guy is dumb”
My point is that you are blowing things out of proportion and given you say you are college educated you should try to open your eyes a bit more to the world around you and realize the world is not black and white. Going intro extreme feminism will only make you seem silly and immature.
Furthermore women joke about men just as much if not more as men joke about women, the only reason why it seems otherwise is because there are more male game designers than female game desigeners.
So if you are dreaming of a day where ALL WOMEN will be pictured perfect in each and very game (since we are talking about the gaming industry) than you are closer to the day you’ll find the fountain of youth, because as long as males will create games they will create scenarios and characters that would more or less bring to life (in a game of course) one or more of their fantasies, is really as simple as that.
Lastly just to clarify i’m not saying is allright for women to be looked upon as nothing more than sexual objects and neither am i saying that sort of behaviour is normal, but the dialogues in this game are nothing more nothing less than jokes.
As an ending note, your extreme feminism fails to deliver a point, all it does is releasing some sort of frustration you may have as well as the fact that you miserably fail to understand several things which happen around you
PS : i didn’t bother proof reading so dont care about grammar errors.
You are looking too much into this, miss. All of those comments from other characters prove that:
1) Morikawa-sensei is a gigantic pervert and a bit of a twit
2) The male characters you save are idiots, and
3) Juliet suffers from something many young girls do: Body Dismorphic Disorder. This game actually (if not in a mostly unnoticed way) brings this ailment up several times through Juliet’s comments about her weight.
To further explain some issues in gaming, I’m going to have to address one subject many women will flat-out deny:
There is sexism against females AND MALES everywhere. Examples:
1) Mortal Kombat: Who the blank has abs like Johnny Kage, or Shao Khan’s muscle tone? Their physique is completely unrealistic.
2) Emotional Detachment: There’s no way that every single male protagonist is a fortress of strength. Put simply, men DO have emotions, and half of the scenarios male protagonists go through would scar, if not break a lesser man. So what, all men are supposed to be “just fine” no matter what comes their way?
3)”Tough Guy”: Although I do enjoy the Duke Nukem Series, I’ll point out two things on this:
1) Sexist towards women – This is sort of obvious, since they are Duke games, that’s just who he is: a sexist, misogynist, hedonistic, egotist asshole
2) Sexist toward men – yet again, the herculean physique, the stone wall of no emotions, and to add to all of that, he is a huge stereotype of an American male; a stereotype which (as all stereotypes do) have no grounds. Also, does every man HAVE to subscribe to being a “tough guy”? There are sensitive men out there, yet everyone rags on them saying they should “be more manly”. I call BS on that.
And, even though these are not game-related, have you ever seen or at least have heard of the female audience turn out for the movie “Magic Mike”? Objectification at it’s “finest”, yet it is in relation to men instead of women. Male objectification can also be seen in the fact that there are establishments like “chip n’ dales”.
All in all, I’m only trying to say this:
1)Sexism is everywhere and towards both genders
2) Sexism from females towards males does happen, but the females who take actions or make comments that could be sexist are either more quiet about it or do so in a more roundabout way, and go largely unnoticed.
and last but not least
3) In the gaming industry, sexism goes both ways; but for whatever reason, sexism towards females is more obvious. I guess the male audience has been exposed to over-muscled, stone-hearted protagonists for so long that we just don’t notice it anymore.