Re: Masculinity in Video Games
Assuming that video games are on par with books or cinema...and they are with an ever expanding library...
You are going to have some pop trash, and some good stuff. We can accept that there is a "strong man" mytho....as per the Greek stories Prof S mentioned, or movies like Conan the Barbarian, 300, Commando, and Die Hard. But maybe people just like watching stuff blown up. I get the homoerotic nature of the strong man mytho...but I'm not empathizing or envying these guys. I don't want to look like a beefcake.
If anything, the emergence of these "strong men" in video games is a retort to all the guys in skinny jeans. Big beefcake guys are on the decline these days, with a curving upward group of metro-sexual males.
This issue is much more complicated than that badly written article, and video games as a medium deserve some love. I enjoy the occasional manly man movie where shit is being blown up and they are cranking out the cheesy as fuck one liners. If you can't appreciate what Gears of War is....polished testosterone and blowing shit up...then how can you appreciate something like No One Lives Forever or Metroid Prime?
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