- Chalupa King117
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- Fabled Legendary Member
T4R.
Backstory: While I was at this summer camp (does academic camp sound mmore mature?) for a writing course, we had to, of course, write stuff. Now while using one of the computers over there, I was looking for my unfinished story until I accidentally clicked a wrong link. Then I found this story someone wrote, and to my surprise it was about Halo. And so I thought to myself, "Hmm, wouldn't this be cool to show the Bungie Net community how Halo could have influenced someone?"
And so being the ass I am, I, without permission, downloaded the document to my flash drive. Now a couple weeks later, I upload it!
The Invincible Alien-Killing Super-Soldier Man
[name redactederedest!]
Canned explosions sound from the television speakers. The endless rattle of a machine gun ricochets off the walls of the room. On the screen a chunky looking gun shoots chunky looking aliens who die and spill chunky looking blood. It's hard to believe that a video game as old and as mindlessly violent as the sci-fi first person shooter game Halo could possibly carry any to any person, let alone be a cultural artifact. But despite all its blood and gore, this game has had a considerable effect I see things in my life ever sense I played it as a young child, and possible on the lives of other children. And I'm not talking about the whole violent video games cause violence in kids parental nightmare. A great deal of what I learned about gender roles came from Halo.
In Halo, the main character is the armor-wearing alien-killing invincible super-soldier known as the Master Chief, the character who you play as in the game. If I was older, I would have known that this Master Chief had the perfect embodiment of stereotypical masculinity; he was strong, iron-willed, and macho in every sense of the word. However my four-year-old couldn't possible have comprehended this, and to me he was what he was: an armor-wearing alien-killing invincible super-soldier. However Halo's first person camera view is in the perspective of the Master Chief, and the game immediately thrust me in his shoes. The message became clear as the first aliens attacked me. To survive, I had to become the master chief.
So as a four year old, I had to take on the roles of pure masculinity. Through countless hours spend in the Master Chief's iron boots, I learned to be un-killable, even in the hardest difficulty. Clearing the level was not enough; I had to dominate the enemies by a large margin to be satisfied. And when my brother introduced me to online play, where I fought other people, the dominance-seeking male aspect had to be even stronger. I had to win every game and be the top dog, the alpha male. Even when I moved away from video games as I grew older, I brought these principles with me in everything I did. To be anything less than the Master Chief was unacceptable. And even now, when I have given up perfection as I learned the realities of the world, a fragment of the chief still remains in me.
But what of the other gender? If a male could be the master chief, why not a female? After all, nothing stops a girl from picking up the controller and play the game. Those who have played Halo can easily recognize its small, nearly non-existent female cast. However there is one prominent female character, and she alone is enough to capture the female stereotype.
Cortana, a female artificial intelligence, is Master Chief's constant companion, residing in a computer chip in the chief's helmet. With her immense intellect, she guides the chief on his missions, providing useful advice and intelligence. Despite this, Cortana is absolutely helpless without the chief's protection, unable to defend herself without a physical form. This helplessness, although rather exaggerated, still captures the stereotype of a female, who is helpless without the protection of a male. Although I did fully interpret all of this at the time, Halo's depiction of Cortana certainly drew a solid line between the roles of male and female.
Perhaps Halo is "just a game". Perhaps it can't have possibly determined the way I perceive gender today. But it isn't just one cultural artifact, like Halo, that influences our culture, in turn influencing how we think. The way people perceive things in a product of the conglomerate of cultural artifacts present in their lives. And for me, Halo has always been one of them.
So, have you guys ever written about Bungie and their games? Perhaps you drew something as a child, a doodle of the Chief shooting alienbaddood?
**LOCK if I broke some rule about unauthorized document posting**
GOGOGO!!!
[Edited on 08.24.2011 8:32 PM PDT]