Damsels in Distress: Do we need Mario to stop saving Peach?

The press has been having a field day with the fallout from the Anita Sarkeesian Tropes vs Women in Video Games videos. Cyberbullying, misogyny, and the hysteria of online mobs; these themes reeled in the media of all political leanings who, in almost all instance, painted a none-too-flattering picture of the perceived videogame community (which in this crucial case was represented by trolls who regretfully labelled themselves ‘gamers’) hasn’t come out of it looking very good to the wider world.

Yet for all the vitriol and subsequent debate surrounding the videos, little has been said that directly addresses the points they raise (nothing without a heavy spattering of personal abuse, that is). The fact that the videos exposed the misogyny running through large chunks of the online community was an unmerry side-effect, but distracted from the question of what - if anything - is to be done about certain habits that certain games have towards female representation. I want to specifically focus on one of these habits - the damsel in distress.

Subversion can take many forms

In her ‘Damsels in Distress’ series, Sarkeesian highlights the fact that many game narratives rely on the age-old cliche involving a male hero saving a hapless, trophy-fied female. At the end of the final episode, Sarkeesian posits a solution; a game idea that “truly” subverts the trope. Is subversion enough though, or would the only real solution be to go all the way, and get rid of the Damsel in Distress altogether?

Sarkeesian’s game premise is simple: a princess waits for weeks in a castle for some knight in shining armour – or plumber – to rescue her. Eventually, she tires of marking off the days on the wall for her saviour and carries out her own escape. She relies on wits and cunning to break out of the castle, return to her homeland, and topple the tyrannical monarchy that’s instated itself there.

This is a sound idea, but the suggestion that it’s more radical or subversive than titles like Braid and Monkey Island - which according to Sarkeesian don’t do quite enough because their narratives rely on the premise of saving a woman - underestimates the latter games. They both charmingly overturn the Damsel in Distress trope, and it’s too reductive to say that a game requires the woman to be the ‘subject’ to be truly subversive; it’s a way, but it’s not the only or necessarily best way.

Braid and Monkey Island are particularly impactful because they string us and our foolish expectations along, building up for hours and hours to a conclusion that we assume will be predictable, but is then thrown back in our faces. We expect the damsel to be an ‘object’, but in both cases she’s a character that’s several steps ahead of us. These games directly address the gamer, making him - or her - feel like the fool. They’re fantastically subversive,  getting us to reflect on some of the cliches of the medium through narrative twists;, in this case the idea that the damsel in distress may actually have her own intentions beyond our control.

A game where you control a damsel who has to escape a castle lacks that element of surprise. With the game’s feminist intention made explicit in the synopsis - subjectifying the princess - . Of course, the subversive impact of the game would ultimately come down to its design, so it’s impossible to judge how effective it would be.

Taking 'true subversion' to the extreme

Let’s take the suggestion that there is such as game that’s “a true subversion of the trope” - the ultimate undoing of the age-old Damsel cliche - to an absurd conclusion for a moment.

Maybe we need a game will be so impactful as to cause a rapture in the phallocentric status quo of the industry. Men and women alike will unite in protest, and march on Nintendo - the place where gaming lost its innocence with the original Donkey Kong - demanding “No More Damsels”. We’ll throw ourselves naked - but desexualised - in front of trucks distributing the retrograde societal poison that is the next Mario game. Finally, when it becomes clear that misogyny mastermind Shigeru Miyamoto is prepared to fight to and die in his patriarchal palace - built on 30 years of hypnotising suggestible men with fantasies of female suppression - we’ll storm him, and overthrow him. Many will perish, of course, but once Miyamoto falls, the curse will be lifted. Nintendo will lie in ruins, but out of the ashes a benevolent council of six women and six men will take over, rebuild the empire, and create a new wave of Mario and Zelda games, all of which will revolve around the trope of their respective princesses escaping captivity over, and over, and over again.

Of course such a thing would only happen figuratively, but positing some kind of ultimate subversion does suggest that there is an idea out there in metaspace that would shatter all our preconceptions and force a mass rethinking in the industry. Do videogames need such an intellectual revolution? I don’t believe they do. It’d be naive to deny that constant subconscious reinforcement of certain ideas has an effect on us, and the same applies to the Damsel trope, but it also seems too radical to say that every game featuring said damsel is damaging womens' stake in society.

Should Mario stop saving Peach?

What better game to contest this point than the Super Mario series, which has relied on the Damsel trope for over 25 years? If we were to get rid of the damsel, we need to take into account Princess Peach, the most influential, purest damsel of all.

Super Mario, as we all know, uses the damsel as a basic narrative tool, but its importance to gaming far outweighs any references it makes to the real world. Part of Mario’s eternal charm is that it’s so far removed from reality - unlike many games of today. It’s a game for gaming’s sake, that people retreat to, and feel familiar in. Mario shuns depth in character, narrative, and other superfluities in favour of creating worlds that are intended to be nothing more than ingeniously designed escapist playgrounds. This intention was made clear by Nintendo boss Shigeru Miyamoto himsel. In an interview with Kotaku about the role of women in Nintendo games, he said, “for me in particular, the structure of the gameplay always comes before the story”.

Yes, Peach is one-dimensional, but so are Mario, Bowser, and Toad (somehow, spending time with a spooked Luigi in a mansion makes him more relatable). Peach may be little more than a trophy, but Mario isn’t some chauvinistic male power fantasy. He’s just an empty, colourful vehicle which we use to explore Miyamoto’s worlds.

In many of today’s narrative-driven, realistically-written games, we fuse a part of our personalities with those of the characters we control. Mario isn’t designed to create such feelings. Our immersion in the Mario games is on a purely game level. We’re not thinking about what Mario’s thinking, or about the princess, or what a bastard Bowser is; they’re all just devices, tools that encourage us to focus not on them, but on the playful and idiosyncratic environments Miyamoto creates for us. It’s wonderful that games now have the ability to affect us as deeply as films, but it’s equally important that games like Mario don’t strive for this. Mario exists to crucially remind us that not all games are defined by their plot, and that there’ll always be room for pure platforming fun in an industry that’s trending towards the gritty and realistic.

Rescuing Princess Peach is a stock end point in the Super Mario series; she was never intended for us to obsess over. We don’t attempt to complete any Mario game so much to see the ending as to simply beat the game. Otherwise, surely Mario’s dull conclusions would be subjected to the same level of hate as, say, the ending of Mass Effect 3? We’re simply not affected enough, because it’s not Miyamoto’s intention to affect us. As such, maybe we should turn our scrutiny of female representation in games elsewhere.

In modern games, even well-developed, fully written characters such as Joel and Ellie in The Last of Us and Lara Croft in Tomb Raider aren’t autonomous, as we emotionally intertwine ourselves with them, share their experiences, and imagine what’s going through their minds when they’re not speaking, or are in life-and-death gunfights. It’s such games - which blur the lines between gaming heroes and ourselves, and rely as much on emotional impact as they do on gameplay - that contain the power to alter our perceptions of the world, and where narrative tropes can be dangerous if abused.

Let’s keep introducing more powerful female characters, and let’s keep subverting cliches with witty narratives and twists that highlight their absurdity, but let’s not demonise games which want nothing more than to be games. Mario’s no misogynist; he’s just a simple, one-dimensional plumber trying to do his job, which is to guide us around vibrant, colourful lands blissfully removed from reality. There’s a debate to be had here, but Mario and Peach - trapped in her castle - don’t belong at the centre of it.