http://www.gamesradar.com/us/xbox360/game/features/article.jsp?articleId=20071207115329881080&releaseId=2006071916221774024§ionId=1003&pageId=20071207115724980042

Guns = Penises

Portals = Vaginas

By taking this Freudian approach to game design the makers of Portal have created the ultimate post modern experience in video gaming by subverting our expectations for the FPS genre and have single handedly elevated video games to the place of high art where it shall be placed in museums where it will topple over the phallic pillars that the powerful rich fat male European artists have erected.

i dont think portal empowers women, i rkn its more gender neutral. even if the main protagonist is a female - you dont see much of the feminity; i only realised half way through the game that i was playing as a girl when i noticed me, through a parralel portal.

its a game about damn portals - there is no interpretation required. love the game for what it is - not what it could be.

I hate to derail this, but please allow me just a moment to sate my curiosity. Mrbunny, does the acronym NTID mean anything to you?

well, it's an original argument, I'll give it that, but it does seem to boil down to a sexist understanding of gender roles - men dominate and are aggressive, women think and are empathic. Not sure I'll agree with the rest of it because this is a flawed based for the argument.

I think Portal's popularity has got more to do with it's stonking ideas and brilliant level design than it's clever subversion of implicit gender politics, however.

Mild spoilers may be inside.

Most feminism does boil down to a sexist understanding of gender roles. That's what it is, after all. Understanding the sexism inherent in gender roles. It's not saying "men ARE this" and "women ARE that", it's identifying some common gender roles that men and women tend to undertake, understand, and ascribe to each other. I mean, even today you can't deny that men primarily gravitate toward the more overtly dominant/aggressive roles in society than do women.

It's interesting to note that the technology demo/game that inspired portal, Narbacular Drop, also has the main protagonist as a female, "Princess No-Knees" (so named because she had no knees, and thus, could not jump.. good thing she had the magical portal power to get around) This does actually lend some weight to the idea that, whether conciously intended or not, Portal may be an expression of a feminine ethos in the typically male dominated (dare we say patriarchal?) realm of the FPS.

Personally, I think calling the oval shape of the portal a vaginal representation is probably reaching a little too far -- sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, after all. Also, it should be pointed out that while Portal may be a subversion of the dominant male ethos in FPS, it is still largely influenced by patriarchal trappings. You still have a "gun", after all, which Narbacular Drop demonstrated was not needed, and the portal generation could have been explained through psychic powers. In fact, this would have been a much more "organic" implementation, thus one more in tune with the typical gender role placed upon the female. In addition, the "portal as vagina substitute" theory poses some difficult metaphoric meanings when one reaches the end of the game and uses the portal to destroy the male-created mother/monster figure that is present in GLaDOS by, literally, burning its balls. (Some might argue that this fits with the Freudian interpretation and the Oedipal complex as a destruction of the mother figure is the ultimate sign of aggression, but this runs into difficulties when we see that the destruction is not of a true mother, but of a male created one, and is done by essentially de-masculinizing it)

I don't think the author was saying that Portal is popular because of it's subversion of implicit gender politics, but rather that it's popular in spite of them. Whether this speaks to an increasing amount of equality between genders withing gaming or simply the cleverness of the subversion isn't at all clear, of course.

All pompousity aside, however, this kind of examination of the game is useful not primarily due to its content, but rather because it speaks once more to the idea of games as art. For a video game to inspire this kind of analysis is possibly one of the strongest pieces of evidence that anybody who thinks games are not an art form simply isn't paying attention.

Oh, don't worry, I certainly wasn't trying to argue that men do not gravitate toward aggressive, dominating roles. I was, rather badly, trying to make the point that it was not the inherent roles/attitudes of men and women, but what society ascribes to them, some of which I do not believe it (but only because I have a problem with generalisations)

The patriarchal nature of games is, I don't think, something to argue about, because it is obviously there, especially in action games. I imagine the main reason for this is that male gaming developers make games that they enjoy, and therefore imbue them with classical male criteria for enjoyment. Whether this is intentional or not is an interesting point, because I'm not sure it is, it's just an unintended consquence of the development process. I'm not sure you can could weave it into the patriarchal over-story of society, apart from mentioning it as a side-effect of said story.

The point about the gun, I think needs a little more criticism. I think the only reason it is a 'gun' is because we lack the shortened vocabulary to express it properly. After all, the apeture science localised portal generational device, or whatever it was, really doesn't roll off the tongue as easy. It's only a 'gun' in a nominal way, much like a wrench and a lathe are both 'tools' but so radically different that they should not really be compared.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I'm not sure about the portals as symbolic vagina's either, though. The point made in the article about the creation of a failed mother figure through science, I think is an excellent point, because it isn't a true Oedipal conflict because it is not, in fact, the mother figure. It also find problems if it had been a true mother figure because we've already mentioned that the character in portal should have inherently feminim characteristic, and therefore not be aggressive (?)

I'll gladly argue games as a new art form, especially in their analysis. I hope that as time progresses and games became even more mainstream, we should be able to take apart a game in this manner and it should stand up to analysis, because of the thought that went into it. I want to play BioShock now, because apparently that has deep thought involved.

K

People tend to look for deeper meaning in what is, on the surface, just something enjoyable. *Insert that cigar quote here*

Portal's one of the most shockingly innovative games to hit the market since the new generation started, but it seems people want to make it even more then what it is. Anyone who's played through the commentary version knows why the companion cube was made- not as some kind of father figure you start attached to then eventually unburden yourself with on your way to womanhood, but as a creative and extremely well-executed method to 'trick' the player to attempt the stage with the cube from the start, since playtesters kept attempting to complete the level while leaving their six-sided puzzle requirement at the start.

It's a fun little conspiracy theory- then again, with enough creative license, I'm sure you could turn Chell's trip into a parallel with the story of Faust. Just because you can force the pieces to add up to the sum you want it to reach means that's what they were intended with.

A few points about the article:

1. "The Portal Gun creates connections rather than destroying life."
There are no live enemies, so it can't possibly "destroy life." Given the opportunity (see the Portal Gun hacked in HL2), the portals can be horribly destructive.

2. "subversion of FPS norms"?

If there is no shooting, how can it be an FPS? Portal is a maze game, not an FPS. The author seems to be confused by the fact that the game was made by Valve on the Source engine.

3. The turrets have "boyish voices"?
No, these are female voices.

4. "Another non-traditional character, the Weighted Companion Cube, represents male identity in Portal."

Yes, and all the crates and barrels (metal and plastic) in HL2 are male too? What about the anonymous cubes in Portal? What is their gender?

5. "[...]Chell incinerates the Weighted Companion Cube, symbolizing a mental unburdening from the need for approval from a father figure."

Symbolizing what? As unwarranted points go, this one gets the prize.

----
Kwil in the post above is too kind in writing that "this kind of examination of the game is useful not primarily due to its content." Its content is rubbish, because it tries to apply a confused and simplistic "reading grid" to what is, in the end, a very fun puzzle game.

"Portal is the most subversive game ever"? Hardly. And the "heady intellectual discourse" is indeed heady, but in the sense of "overbearing" and "rash."

well, simply, i'll just say this, i think its to far fetched and they were probably using "something" while they thought this up :) its a funny way to look at it, but honestly, i cant really take this seriously, because i to think its kind of neutral, actually i think so for most games.

As humans, we really do search for symbolism. From the intentional pronounced metaphors of a novel like Moby Dick, to every day when we look up at the passing amorphous clouds in the sky, we see symbols.

So I don't blame the author here for looking for symbols, it's what we do, we have the brains for it, but I think this might be a bit on the far side. Personally, I've never bought much into Freudian-like interpretations of the world, because ultimately regardless of original purpose or utility, people can invent meanings for objects.

Calling the turrets voice "boyish" I also thought was quite odd. If you listen, it's noticeable that the voice of the turrets is also the voice of GlaDOS, an actress named Ellen McLain.

There are lots of other strange interpretations that people have pointed out but how the author has heard the turrets stood out to me because I think it best shows how far the author is reaching to try to find aspects to reinforce their interpretation of the game.

The search for symbolism can be a fun endeavor, but you have realize from the start that you may be searching for something that is only there in your own mind. That does not make it any less real on an intellectual level, because we all take what we want from experiences. But to call a game subversive based on some rather far-reaching interpretations is a bit much.

That's what I think, at least.

I have no idea why anyone in their right mind would think portal is empowering to women... Yes the protagonist is a woman, but would they seriously have been in their right minds to throw in another Gordon Freeman? No! repetitiveness can only go so far. (Check out Leprechaun: Back To Da Hood for reference.)
It's just creepy to think video games empower either gender. It's just a norm we have to get past.
The three biggest names in action ( in my opinion) are Schwarzeneggar (Spelled properly?) Willis and Jolee... if that one is even spelled right who knows.Anyway.
It wasn't really until sony started tyring to pretend that lara Croft was a living being did women get any true recognition for video games. It's not empwoering or anything, it's just the way things are. We would think the same of Die Hard if some random good looking actress played Jennifer McClain.

Empower is a strong word (No pun inttended) and a video game has never truly empowerd either gender so much as it has been the root of all teen violence.

I believe games have the potential to create fantastic, breathtaking experiences and really make us look inside ourselves and all the other crap that comes along with art. I think that Portal is an original and imaginative game, the sort of game that leads other games to becoming deeper.

But psychoanalysing a game for Freudian ideals? It's a game. I'm pretty sure Valve wasn't trying to make a game about feminism. They were trying to make a first-person puzzle (it's not a shooter if you don't shoot anything) game. Certainly, they went for new ideas, but all this stuff about metaphors and symbolism must be the result of the author drinking too much peyote.

And GLaDOS does use physical brutality! She tries to bake you in a furnace! The robots are her tools!

So, how long til we get the Vagina Portal mod? Instead of shooting out a particle-lined portal, you shoot out a big (insert favorite vaginal adjectives here) vagina.

all i have to is that when the people from valve sat down and came up with this game there is no way that all that was running through their minds. noooo way. this is one of thouse trying to explain a blank canvas as art to get billions for it. they are just searching.

you know, guns dont equal pee pees all the time you know, i've seen lesbians holding big old GPMGs and i dont think they saw any phallic symbolism. some times a guns just a huge metal death machine sent down by the godsat valve, and thats that.

however i would say that the ataoginist/boss/mistress in portal has a sexy ass voice, and i think the whole fact she's bossing you around puts across the good arugments for those burning bras over at valve.

plus it is a fps, its first person and you shoot. plus its a pazzle game [like almost every other fps game] but yeah i'd go for FPP [first person puzzler] or something.

oh oh oh you think coming outa of the pther side of the portal is a metaphor for birth? becuase you know EVERY LAST THING ON THE PLANET IS SOME DEEP FREUDIAN METAPHOR, becuase some times a cigars a willy, ya know.

Maybe it's time someone actually made a game about being a woman? Like, Sim Woman - experience what it's like to be a woman in modern America! Where you get cramps every month, hit the glass ceiling in your career, and are constantly badgered to lose some weight, girl.

C'mon ladies, step up! Where is VagiShock, Grand Theft Vagina, Vag Effect, Vagina's Creed, Thelma & Louise: Dead Women (hmm that one could be interesting..), and The Pink Box? I'm only half kidding.

stevesan:
Maybe it's time someone actually made a game about being a woman? Like, Sim Woman - experience what it's like to be a woman in modern America! Where you get cramps every month, hit the glass ceiling in your career, and are constantly badgered to lose some weight, girl.

C'mon ladies, step up! Where is VagiShock, Grand Theft Vagina, Vag Effect, Vagina's Creed, Thelma & Louise: Dead Women (hmm that one could be interesting..), and The Pink Box? I'm only half kidding.

Not to be objectifying, but I pitched (With a story board) a game for the Wii to my friends. It was called 'Peach Learns Her Place." You used the Wiimote to cook, clean and give mario a decent handCENSORED!!!!!... Everyone had a good laugh that day....

ANYWAY! The idea of applying Freaudian logic to anything is just nonsense, as I'm sure all of you know that Siggy was nothing more than a quack. He had some deep well rooted ideas, but he was still a quack.
After all if you paid any attention to the commentaries they talk about how portal was basically a gigantic well done Beta for the idea of a physics based FPS puzzle gume.
The weighted companion cube being a metaphor for the father figure? If anything it was a bra burning metaphor... It's just crazy. Stop ruining my games by reading what isn't there.

I don't even link pink hearts on a cube with a father figure. Maybe they should make it a black cube that yelled at me every five minutes that I was grounded? :p

Most of the article reads things into the game that aren't there, but then again, the game just does have a slightly more female touch, even if it was only for the female robot voice that talks to you in some (fake) motherly way.

AnGeL.SLayer:
all i have to is that when the people from valve sat down and came up with this game there is no way that all that was running through their minds. noooo way. this is one of thouse trying to explain a blank canvas as art to get billions for it. they are just searching.

And what's the matter with the search? Why write about games, or any other cultural endeavor for that matter, if you're not allowed to negotiate your own experiences and meanings found within those experiences? If we took the intent of the author/designer/producer of any given work as not only authoritative, but exactly dilineating the scope of things that can be said about a game, there wouldn't really be any purpose to writing about games on any level deeper than a list of technical specifications and cheat codes.

I don't get how anyone could take "searching" or, more commonly, "reaching," to have negative connotations.

stevesan:
Maybe it's time someone actually made a game about being a woman? Like, Sim Woman - experience what it's like to be a woman in modern America! Where you get cramps every month, hit the glass ceiling in your career, and are constantly badgered to lose some weight, girl.

And women would play this game, why? To see what it's like to be a stereotypical 'maltreated woman'? They'd know - so supposedly this game is for men. Good. Then perhaps, vice versa, there should be a game about being a man, waking up feeling like having sex, going to nightclubs and pinching bottoms, skyrocketing your career once it turns out that not only you but everybody in the office is manly and constantly telling women to lose weight, ho!

Perhaps then we'd understand why men are such happy, merry, worry-less creatures.

Jeroen Stout:
Perhaps then we'd understand why men are such happy, merry, worry-less creatures.

...we are? When did I miss this memo? :P

Anyway. Guns-as-representations-of-the-penis thing aside (and am I ever resisting the urge to quote the movie "Zardoz"), it's rather difficult to say that Portal is a game that empowers women- if for no other reason than, of the two characters the game features, one doesn't utter a single syllable and the other isn't actually a woman, but a psychotic artificial intellgence that just happens to have a woman's voice.

Jeroen Stout:
Perhaps then we'd understand why men are such happy, merry, worry-less creatures.

I too missed this memo... or is that because I am not much of a man.

As for the topic... I still don't see anything you said being represented here. In my mind I have a very complex 3-D puzzle game with very funny things that can be done. I like sitting around durring the boss fight listening to GlaDOS and the machines. "RAHHAHAHAGGAGASSGAGSAGS ARAGSGASGAGSA HAGAGAGAGAHASGSHSHS" As the red ball would say.

Excuse me while I get a bit tangenital:

Here's Dee Snider of Twister Sister being questioned by Al Gore, responding to accusations that his song "Under The Blade" was about "sadomasochism and rape".

--

SENATOR GORE.
You say your song "Under the Blade" is about surgery. Have you ever had surgery with your hands tied and your legs strapped?

MR. SNIDER. The song was written about my guitar player, Eddie Ojeda. He was having polyps removed from his throat and he was very fearful of this operation. And I said: Eddie, while you are in the hospital I am going to write a song for you.
I said it was about the fear of operations. I think people imagine being helpless on a table, the bright light in their face, the blade up, who knows, dead, handicapped. There is a certain fear of hospitals. That is what, in my imagination, what I see the hospitals like.

SENATOR GORE. Is there a reference to the hospital in the song?

MR. SNIDER. No, there is not. But there is not a reference to a woman, sado-masochism, or--well, bondage, yes.

SENATOR GORE. There is a reference to someone whose hands are tied down and whose legs are strapped down, and he is going under the blade to be cut.

MR. SNIDER. Yes, there is.

SENATOR GORE. So it is not really a wild leap of the imagination to jump to the conclusion that the song is about something other than surgery or hospitals, neither of which are mentioned in the song?

MR. SNIDER. No, it is not a wild jump. And I think what I said at one part was that songs allow a person to put their own imagination, experiences, and dreams into the lyrics. People can interpret it in many ways. Ms. Gore was looking for sado-masochism and bondage and she found it. Someone looking for surgical references would have found that as well.

--

And that's why, although clever and articulate, the article about Portal is basically nonsense from start to finish. People interpret things differently, depending on their experience, and naturally some feminists would read into Portal a bunch of gender-issue politics because some of these people are OBSESSED with gender-issue politics and see them EVERYWHERE. But just because I look at a cloud floating in the sky and see a penis or a vagina doesn't mean that the cloud is "subverting" anything.

Jeroen Stout:

stevesan:
Maybe it's time someone actually made a game about being a woman? Like, Sim Woman - experience what it's like to be a woman in modern America! Where you get cramps every month, hit the glass ceiling in your career, and are constantly badgered to lose some weight, girl.

And women would play this game, why? To see what it's like to be a stereotypical 'maltreated woman'? They'd know - so supposedly this game is for men. Good. Then perhaps, vice versa, there should be a game about being a man, waking up feeling like having sex, going to nightclubs and pinching bottoms, skyrocketing your career once it turns out that not only you but everybody in the office is manly and constantly telling women to lose weight, ho!

Perhaps then we'd understand why men are such happy, merry, worry-less creatures.

Ok I'll get a little serious now. The point wouldn't be to have American women play the game. The point is to let others, whether men or just non-American people, get a feel for what it's like to be a woman in modern America. How feasible this is..I have no idea. It seems best fit as some graduate student's thesis. Just a random thought.

I remember a while ago this interactive Flash thing that taught you Japanese business manners. So perhaps games can be used as cultural communication for various cultural groups.

As someone who has also chosen to waste years of their youth on silly degrees in silly things, I saw this thread and actually felt compelled to register and offer a brief defense of the author, because I thought this thing was dash cunning. Also, thanks to the above posters who mentioned aspects of this before.

"[Warning: The text you are about to read contains heady intellectual discourse and is not recommended for anyone made queasy by the discussion of feminist film theory or psychoanalytical signifiers.]" is also a bit of a hint the whole thing is a joke. Not a "ha ha that's false" joke. But more a little wink and a nod to people who have read about those things and all ready know how ridiculous they are inherently. I don't think the author is seriously suggesting that the feminist revolution is going to happen the day after women start playing portal. Rather, that this sort of academic game that the author is dabbling in--the one of (Lacanian) Psychoanalytical signifiers and feminist implications--absolutely occurs within videogames.

The biggest points I took from that article are these:
1) Games are literature insofar as literature has invaded cultural studies. Any attempt to have any aspect of that first sentence without eating the whole cake is cheating.
2) Most action games are generally pretty masculine in a lot of obvious ways. And portal does reject many of these (ie. it has no conventional enemies).
3) Since Portal does, no two ways about it, a lot of very innovative stuff that isn't common in gaming. If gamers want to be taken seriously, that's exactly what we need to question. What does portal *mean.* We've noted that portal breaks trends and revolutionizes whatever, but what is the significance of the things portal does differently? What is the significance of Portal that makes it this revolution in gaming that people are calling it, and what does this "revolution" reflect from reality

Now number 3 is where most of the issues seem to come up. People who are saying in various ways that it's just a game and you shouldn't think about it so much. Or that because everyone plays games differently what she says is wrong. Or because VALVE didn't make the game with the intent of causing a feminist revolution that the game isn't feminist.

All that stuff is valid, don't get me wrong, but it also doesn't really matter to the articles. I mean those are all critiques you could literally use against Shakespeare--all of them have been, actually. So while you can object to this particular interpretation of portal (and indeed I encourage it! what better way to start thinking about the questions I described in 3?), I think the reading of portal is the hugely important part. And trying to suggest that portal shouldn't be read in terms of "what it means" is basically to say that games aren't part of culture the way that music and art and literature are. And I think that's plum crazy. And I think the articles *does* make a damn fine argument for that.

Kwil:
Personally, I think calling the oval shape of the portal a vaginal representation is probably reaching a little too far -- sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, after all. Also, it should be pointed out that while Portal may be a subversion of the dominant male ethos in FPS, it is still largely influenced by patriarchal trappings. You still have a "gun", after all, which Narbacular Drop demonstrated was not needed, and the portal generation could have been explained through psychic powers. In fact, this would have been a much more "organic" implementation, thus one more in tune with the typical gender role placed upon the female. In addition, the "portal as vagina substitute" theory poses some difficult metaphoric meanings when one reaches the end of the game and uses the portal to destroy the male-created mother/monster figure that is present in GLaDOS by, literally, burning its balls. (Some might argue that this fits with the Freudian interpretation and the Oedipal complex as a destruction of the mother figure is the ultimate sign of aggression, but this runs into difficulties when we see that the destruction is not of a true mother, but of a male created one, and is done by essentially de-masculinizing it)

This was an excellent post that made me want to comment again.

I also agree with the point about the portals perhaps being a bit too far to press a visual metaphor into serving as an abstract one. Although, with your argument about the aggression towards the mother as Oedipal, I agree but I think it doesn't go quite far enough!

Remember Glados is constructed by men, She's a fake. so perhaps she isn't the mother. Our female protagonist is threatened by this false female voice who constantly tries to confuse her and give her conflicting demands: then we learn it's a false female constructed by men. The tasks which are seemingly so arbitrary are, in fact, arbitrary. It is only when she realizes listening to the voice means her destruction that she escapes the task and begins to subvert the commands. Also, not until then the voice becomes anxious and troubled. Not until then does the voice reveal the power that it "lacks." If she "busts balls" to kill Glados then it's because she is deconstructing patriarchy which enforces a set and fixed (and therefore oppressive and, in an excessively Lacanian sense, phallocentric) narrative. Her mother figure is absent for there is nothing that represents the nurturing and the safety of "lack," Glados, the ultimate figure of patriarchy holds all the power and all the cards as long as she plays by the rules. That is exactly the position of the father against which she strikes. By killing her father she enables and allows the desire for the mother, the desire for lack, which she herself was forced to embody for glados. Is her victory not a death of the father within this Oedipal narrative?

(the above is all in fun! ;) )

Pointless thread, its so pointless i regret ever typing this.

Rent:
Pointless thread, its so pointless i regret ever typing this.

Then why bother? Just because you don't understand doesn't mean you have to drag us down with you. Go away.

Hey, baby, how about I stick my Gravity gun in your Aperture Science department Portal Device.

Personally everything in Portal comes across as being so robotic to me, I never associated my Companion Cube or even GLaDOS with a gender. It's a robot, with a female voice. And the cube is, well, an object. With hearts on it. Pink hearts. That's masculine. For sure.