Final Fantasies

Virtual Women's Bodies

Bibliographic Data

ID5151023
AuthorsLaura Fantone (City University of New York, corresponding author)
Year2003
Volume4
Issue1
Pages51-72
Publication date2003-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-7001 • E-ISSN: 1741-2773
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1464700103004001003
OpenAlexW2325919738
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited13

In the last decades videogames have become very popular. In this article I argue that they establish a new relationship between bodies and identities. In videogames, the storylines are based on a mixture of other types of media fiction, where women's bodies are overrepresented and stereotypical, because of the market logic underlying these new media productions, which target a wide audience. Nevertheless, videogames' interactivity shapes new experiences of acting through other bodies. The erotic gaze on virtual bodies is shaped by the elements of exoticism and the grotesque. The virtual spaces and actions are characterized by exoticism (the recurrent presence of death, fear, surprise, thrills) and the realism necessary to involve the user's senses. I also argue that interaction in games is a process of imagination and action. The game user acts through another body, which he/she controls. This process opens possibilities for a resisting oppositional gaze and subversive practices, beyond the commercial aims of the games' designers. Of course, there are oppressive aspects of the virtual bodies; a female body becomes a mathematical series of polygons, out of space and time, and, only as such, the object of desire of invisible cyberteenagers. Nevertheless, as gendered subjects, to have a virtual body to play with is a liberating appropriation of a space not designed for us

Aesthetics · Affordance · Appropriation · Art · Epistemology · Exoticism · Human–computer interaction · Interactivity · Linguistics · Multimedia · Realism · Sociology · Surprise · Anthropology · Cinema and Media Studies · Communication · Computer Science · Digital Games and Media · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Philosophy

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