A heads up for all you fans of Anita Sarkeesian, or perhaps her detractors. The second installment of Tropes vs. Women in Video Games video series is live. This one, much like the first, centers on the oh so popular contrivance: the girl in peril.
Part one traced the formative roots of the damsel in distress, in early video games, and part two examines its various modern incarnations in contemporary games. A key focal point of Sarkeesian's second video is what she describes as "trope cocktails", which combines the already negative trope with even worse ones.
Namely "the disposable woman, the mercy killing, and the woman in the refrigerator". All of these attempts to make a game seem grittier, and edgier, mostly to help them stick out from the pack. Take a look:
As if it needs to be said, but Anita Sarkeesian has her fair share of critics (and then some), who would love nothing more than to the Feminist Frequency series just go away.
The most recent example of such people trying to convey their disapproval (since they cannot do so in the form of YouTube comments, since said feature has been disabled in all of Sarkeesian’s videos) is how, not long after part two made its debut, the video was pulled.
How come? Certain users flagged it as being inappropriate and YouTube followed suited. Though after Sarkeesian responded to the take down, the video was back up after 45 minutes. YouTube issued a comment on the matter, to Polygon:
"With the volume of videos on our site, sometimes we make the wrong call. We have an appeals process in place for users, and when it's brought to our attention that a video has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it."
