Abstract
This chapter provides a conceptualization of gazing practices during the playing of video games. Understanding gaze as a gendered performance influenced by intersecting facets of identity, the framework that I propose emphasizes gaze as a praxis that players can adopt, learn, and develop throughout their moments of play. As an example of this approach to gamic gazing, I specifically elaborate on feminine gaze to highlight the possible pleasures, desires, and experiences of playing video games from a feminine subject position, resisting or denying the conventions of male gaze. To demonstrate feminine gaze and the entangling layers of gaze at work during the playing of video games, this chapter features an analysis of Ada Wong’s chapter in Resident Evil 6.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Arsenault, Dominic, Pierre-Marc Côté, and Audrey Larochelle. 2015. The Game FAVR: A Framework for the Analysis of Visual Representation in Video Games. Loading… 9 (14): 88–123 http://journals.sfu.ca/loading/index.php/loading/article/view/155.
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble. New York, NY: Routledge.
Capcom. 1998. Resident Evil 2. Playstation. Capcom.
———. 2012. Resident Evil 6. Multiple-platform. Capcom.
Carr, Diane. 2002. Playing with Lara. In Screenplay: Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces, ed. Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska, 171–180. London: Wallflower Press.
Clover, Carol. 1992. Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Cooper, Brenda. 2000. ‘Chick Flicks’ as Feminist Texts: The Appropriation of the Male Gaze in Thelma & Louise. Women’s Studies in Communication 23 (3): 277–306.
Crigger, Lara. 2007. Resident Evil’s Second Sex. The Escapist, May 8. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/issues/issue_96/536-Resident-Evil-s-Second-Sex.
Doane, Mary Ann. 1991. Femme Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis. New York, NY: Routledge.
Freeland, Cynthia A. 1996/2009. Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films. In Film Theory and Criticism, ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, 7th ed., 627–648. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Galloway, Alexander. 2006. Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Gamman, Lorraine. 1989. Watching the Detectives: The Enigma of the Female Gaze. In The Female Gaze, ed. Lorraine Gamman and Margaret Marshment, 8–26. Seattle, WA: Real Comet Press.
hooks, bell. 1992. Black Looks. Boston, MA: South End Press.
Ishii, Sara. 2014. “Unless She Had Implants, She Must Be Chinese”: A Feminist Analysis of Players’ Responses to Representations of Chinese and Japanese Female Video Game Characters. Loading… 8 (3): 81–99.
Keller, Alyse, and Katie L. Gibson. 2014. Appropriating the Male Gaze in the Hunger Games: The Rhetoric of a Resistant Female Vantage Point. Texas Speech Communication Journal 38 (1): 21–30.
Modleski, Tania. 1988/2009. The Master’s Dollhouse: Rear Window. In Film Theory and Criticism, ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, 7th ed., 723–735. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Mulvey, Laura. 1975/2009. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. In Film Theory and Criticism, ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, 7th ed., 711–722. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
———. 1981/1991. Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ Inspired by King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun (1946). In Feminist Film Theory, ed. Sue Thornham, 122–130. New York, NY: New York University Press.
Myers, Maddy. 2014. Femme Doms of Video Games: Bayonetta Doesn’t Care if She’s Not Your Kink. Paste Magazine, October 30. http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2014/10/femme-doms-of-videogames-bayonetta-doesnt-care-if.html.
Platz, Jenny. 2014. The Woman in the Red Dress: Sexuality, Femme Fatales, the Gaze, and Ada Wong. In Unraveling Resident Evil: Essays on the Complex Universe of the Games and Films, ed. Nadine Farghaly, 117–134. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Sherwin, Miranda. 2008. Deconstructing the Male Gaze: Masochism, Female Spectatorship, and the Femme Fatale in Fatal Attraction, Body of Evidence, and Basic Instinct. Journal of Popular Film and Television 35 (4): 174–182.
Shimizu, Celine Parreñas. 2007. The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Tasker, Yvonne. 1993. Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre, and the Action Film. New York, NY: Routledge.
Williams, Linda. 1984. When the Woman Looks. In The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, ed. Barry Keith Grant, 15–34. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Wu, Ellen. 2014. The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Jennings, S.C. (2018). Women Agents and Double-Agents: Theorizing Feminine Gaze in Video Games. In: Gray, K., Voorhees, G., Vossen, E. (eds) Feminism in Play. Palgrave Games in Context. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90539-6_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90539-6_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-90538-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-90539-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)