Over at Kotaku, Maggie Greene has posted an excellent article discussing the subtlety of sexuality in cinema and how such subtlety has yet to make its way into the realm of video games. The main thrust of her argument is that video games, by and large, use cheap tricks to insert sexuality into video games as fan service. Such attempts at forcing sex into games where it doesn’t necessarily belong ends up feeling forced and lends an air of artifice to the entire effort.
Games do not strive for verisimilitude nearly as often as cinema does, so the insertion of naked women into a game about BMX racing isn’t likely to destroy the player’s sense of atmosphere. On the other hand, as games like Mass Effect move toward more realistic representations of human interaction, albeit in fantastic settings, it becomes more important that each component of the human experience represented in the game not disrupt the illusion.
As I read Greene’s discussion, I thought of a few other films, a little closer to my areas of knowledge than the Chinese cinema she focused on. In particular, I was reminded of the lesbian sex scene in Mulholland Drive. I know many people love David Lynch and love that movie, but I am not one of those people. I cannot understand how people can derive any sort of enjoyment out of a movie so clearly meant to highlight the artifice of film. No scene better embodies that artifice than the sex scene between Naomi Watts and Laura Harring. It is the sensual equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. The stiffness of the scene makes its “scene-ness” apparent. Lynch, however, intends for the audience to feel uncomfortable. In video games these days, sex is handled just as clumsily and the intention is not one of meta-commentary.
Film is far more capable of expressing that subtle sexuality than games, however. Though Greene is able to cite a few examples of more nuanced portrayals of relationship, video games have not yet become a medium for such expression. Looking back to film, most of the most intriguing, sexually charged relationships I’ve seen occurred in black and white under the watchful eye of censors. Each word in Casablanca or To Have and Have Not (I’m a sucker for Bogart and Bacall–sue me) is more portentous because the actors are more restricted physically. The actresses can’t simply strip down to make a scene more erotic. They have to let their sexuality shimmer and waft in each scene. The audience has to infer the sex from the scene, and that interaction, whether conscious or not, gives the discovered eroticism greater impact.
In video games, there are limits to what you can portray. As photorealistic characters become the norm, the games industry in its depictions of sex will increasingly find itself confronting the uncanny valley. When an audience can pick up on the meaning of Lauren Bacall’s half-smile, any hint of artificiality in either the characterization of sex in a video game or the depiction of the characters themselves will destroy the illusion. To be blunt: robot sex isn’t sexy.
Ultimately, I think that video games need to rely less on showing or telling and more on implying when they deal with sexuality. I know with our big quad core processors that we want to flex all of our CPU power and render damn near everything, but there are some things that are better left to the imagination.
Or hardcore pornography, if that’s your thing.
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