Gender Roles

Ramirez, Yolanda

Professor Dinsmore

English 114B

March 5, 2012

Gender Roles

Explore gender roles in Gamer and/or The Surrogates.

In this essay I will be addressing question number 4 which explores the gender roles in both the “Gamer” and/or “The Surrogates”. I would first address the movie “Gamer” and how women are viewed and used. I would also go deeper into this topic and address why people use avatars to interact with each other instead of themselves. I would also explore the reason why people also choose to be different genders when they are using their avatar form. After explaining the movie “Gamer” I would then proceed to explain the book “The Surrogates” and how it explores gender role. I would then proceed to compare how similar both “Gamer” and “The Surrogates” are.

The movie “Gamer” deals with people who are wealthy and use avatars to do things they don’t usually would do themselves. Video games play a big part in this movie since everyone who is wealthy spend most their free time playing them. One of the public’s favorite games is “Society”. “Society” allows the player to control a real person and make them do whatever they desire. The “characters” of this game, are usually poor people and they do this as a job.

In this movie, women are usually viewed as inferior to men. For example, in the game “Society”, men usually decide to play a woman avatar and make her do nasty things. They dress them with not much clothing and make them hurt themselves or do things women usually wouldn’t do on their right minds. They also make them have sex with women and men. Women are view as a sex symbol and people who usually play women use them for that, sex. Also, when the avatar gets hurt, the player doesn’t feel the pain, only the avatar. The person playing the avatar feels the pain but it’s not in the right mind to process what is going on therefore can’t control it.

I think that the movie also projects how anti-social people really are. They prefer to interact with each other through avatars instead of actually meeting each other in real life. Are people really scared of how another person is going to think of them? Obviously they are, because another factor I also noticed throughout the movie is that every avatar is beautiful. They fit the standards of “society”. Usually the people controlling the avatar are the completely the opposite. People are so scared of what “society” would think about them that they rather hide behind a computer and pretend to be someone else.

Another factor that also plays a big part in gender roles is the fact that people want to feel beautiful. Society sets “standards” that everyone has to fit in order to be socially acceptable in society. That is one of the main reasons why people use women as sex toys. Women have to be beautiful in order for people to like them. When men choose to play a woman, they choose someone who is sexy, not someone who is not consider to be “beautiful” by society’s standards. Every avatar woman you see on the game is beautiful. This video game called “Society” had become part of people’s lives.

Another interesting article that also focuses on gender role is the book “The Surrogates”. In the book “The Surrogates” people also use their avatars to do what they would normally do in their daily routines. People have gotten so used to use their avatars all the time that they have completely forgotten what is like to interact with real people. One of the main characters in this series is Victor/Victoria. He is the creator of the avatars yet he also wants to destroy them. He takes a double identity, as a woman and a man. It seems like being a man didn’t satisfy his needs therefore he decided to create a female image of himself.

The movie “Gamer” and the book “The Surrogates” have a lot of factors that make them similar. They both address how people seem to rely on their avatars to do things they would not normally do. In both articles, women are portrayed as the weak “sex” and are used as sex icons. Men also seemed to play women’s roles when using avatars. Seems like they prefer to do “bad” things when using a woman that way their reputation does not get ruin. Both articles portrayed women in a bad way.

In my opinion, after watching the movie “Gamer” and read “The Surrogates” what I got from both articles is that people seem to hide who they really are behind these “machines” because they are too afraid to be themselves. “Society” makes people believe that they can be happier if they play their game. Using other people in order to be happier with their own life sounds like a much more interesting way to enjoy life. Instead of improving their own life, people choose to live a different life.

            I feel like this should apply in “real” life. These are just a few of great examples of how people actually view themselves. Although things have changed a bit about how women are portrayed, that doesn’t mean that society doesn’t still view them that way. Women feel like they still have to impress society and they want to feel “socially” acceptable in every way possible that they would change their image and the way they act in order to fit in. Men also feel like they have to follow certain standards to keep being on top. But what they don’t understand is that they are society. They set their own standards and even though they don’t agree with them, they don’t do anything to change them because they are afraid of change and the fact that someone might disagree with them. If they would only express how they feel, they would all understand that everyone is on the same page and maybe instead of hiding behind avatars, they would interact with each other and create a better society.