Necrophelia, anyone? Can we honestly look at a woman's corpse, dressed and lit to look as sexy as possible, and not feel disturbed?

I, too, have started noticing more and more mixing of sex and violence (not violence followed by sex, like in the old action movies, but the two together). I don't know if there is more of it these days, or if I'm just becoming more aware of it. But either way, it gives me an intensely uncomfortable feeling.

Why would people respond positively to this sort of thing?

As somebody familiar with the video game series "Hitman" I would have to say that this has absolutely nothing to do with violence against women.

The game has nothing to do with violence against women, and the demographic (young teenage males who enjoy violent video games) understand that.

What they also understand, however, is that sex sells, whether the woman is dead, alive, naked, or in a potato sack.

A dead woman in lingerie has nothing to do with violence against women? What an...interesting...interpretation of the facts.

And by "sex sells", you mean "women's bodies sell", dead or alive.

The game has nothing to do with violence against women, and yet it's marketing depicts a dead woman in lingerie, who's presumably been "executed" (presumably by the player).

How Orwellian.

And yet you admit that the demographic enjoys violence and that sex sells. How is this NOT the mingling of sex and violence?

What are you gonna tell us next - you love rape porn but it has nothing to do with hating women?

Kimmy, I think that's a distortion of what Alex said. Nowhere in Alex's post do I see a suggestion that a scantily clad female corpse has nothing to do with violence against women.

The violence (against women) depicted in the ad is unrelated to the type of violence featured in the game (unless this new game is a departure from the old ones). The ad, instead of being a reflection of a content of the game, was conceived by a marketing team, probably in hopes of bringing in more buyers beyond the people who played the earlier games in the series, by using this eroticized violence.

I'm kind of curious if the marketing companies that use this kind of imagery have focus-grouped it, and what kind of reactions they got from people with it.

Look, whether y'all like it or not, the ad is connected to the game. The ad is meant to sell the game. The images in the ad are meant to be mentally connected to the game. You can try to make the two completely separate, but it's a lost cause.

I would also argue with Alex's claim that the young men who are the audience for this game understand anything about violence, sex, and women. We're talking about the same market for a game where it was okay to beat up and kill the hookers, but becoming able to have sex with them caused a scandal.

Violence against women is nothing new to these people. It's in the advertising, and it's in a lot of the games. And you just can't say that everything is so completely compartmentalized that there's no connection. People just don't work that way.

I haven't played Hitman, but I'm going to give Alex the benefit of the doubt and suggest that perhaps the game isn't exclusively about violence against women, as opposed to certain slasher films that have cause quite a bit of discussion around these parts lately. That doesn't make the marketing ploy any less horrific, and I'm not going to even get started on the whole violent-video-game debate, but it's quite possible you're executing just as many dudes as chicks. I seem to remember someone in the Captivity thread being a little nostalgic for Freddy Kreuger and his egalitarian slaughter.

Kimmy didn't reply to Alex, I did.

Even if the game itself doesn't feature violence against women, the marketing does. And the fact that it works is proof that many young men (and older ones) are excited and lured in by the image of a half-naked murdered woman.

I wouldn't buy the game myself.

But I think there's a difference between violence against someone who HAPPENS TO BE a woman and/or in lingerie ("I'm a hitman, and my target today is ____; the best time to kill her is in bed") versus violence against someone BECAUSE she's a woman and/or in lingerie.

they are--technically--both "violence against women." But the latter is much more disturbing, at least to me. Which is this game promoting?

I've also played the Hitman series. The games aren't so much violence against women, more like violence against everyone. I don't remember there being much (if any) sex involved, just killing people in interesting ways.

With that said, we really can't deny the sex and violence implied in the picture of the dead woman in lingerie and high heels spread out on a red satin sheet.

I agree with Alex that the demographic for these types of games is young men and that sex and violence are usefule advertising tools for them. What we need to ask is, why is sex and violence, especially together, so appealing? How do we de-sexualize violence in our society?

I think a lot of it is that young men just don't get the symbolism behind these images. As an example,my (late 20's)brother wathes wrestling and has bought some WWE merchandise, specifically T-shirts. One he bought was for a wrestler named 'Edge' who goes with the sub-name 'The Rated R Super Star'. The T-shirt had a 'sex & violence' theme (I'm not making this up, check out the link - http://www.wweshop.com/displayimage.asp?product=76030X.JPG) When I saw the shirt, at first I was stunned. And then I laughed. I had to explain to my brother that he was proudly displaying a shirt meant to look like it was covered in blood an semen. He hasn't worn it since.

The tagline actually really creeps me out even more than the image. "Beautifully executed." Yeah. Not only do we have an image of a woman here dead and dressed in sexy lingerie, we're also explicitly told that this image is meant to be erotic. In case you couldn't make the connection for yourself.

Gross.

What they also understand, however, is that sex sells, whether the woman is dead, alive, naked, or in a potato sack.

And you don't find the fact that the viewer is supposed to be responding sexually to a woman who is dead at all disturbing? You see, your flip little comment seems to elide the distinction between a woman who is dead and a woman who is alive. Are you seriously arguing that sexual arousal at the sight/thought of a dead woman is equivalent to sexual arousal at the sight/thought of a living woman?

Movie posters aside, do you guys think that movies/video games should never involve violence against women? It seems like every time a controversial movie poster surfaces, feminists are all over it.

Maybe if you team up with the conservatives, your combined power can save the children from the violence.

Movie posters aside, Pearl, do you ever show up here except to troll?

I don't think that movies or video games should eroticize violence against women. The fact that you can't tell the different between violence against women and eroticizing violence against women speaks volumes.

I'm not sure if that ad is supposed to be disturbing or what, but it looks rather creepy to me.

Am I the only one who's thinking, "If that were a real corpse, there'd be a messy exit wound and a voiding of the bladder and bowels"?

Hmm, I dont want to completely bash this ad, since Im familiar with the game. So I do know that this poster isnt entirely about “violence against women�, its about violence against the (protagonists) targets. Things like gender and race are irrelevant in the game, you kill them all the same (the game has always had a very “dark� theme).

However, this add may connect to people like me who are familiar with the game, although I never the less dislike the advertisement all the same. This is mainly because I dont think its appropriate, since the large majority of people will not understand the advertisements point, and simply see that sexualised dead body of a woman.

The core of the game aside, I do agree that this whole sexualising of women simultaneously with violence is becoming disturbingly frequent. I do think the ad needs blasting for a) buying into that sick scheme that appears far too often for my tastes and b) for not taking into account how little this ad communicates to those who arent familiar with the game.

However, I will add this, as it might shed light for some people on the ads point:

http://www.hitmanforum.com/forum/uploads/1142079620/gallery_5859_7_145932.jpg

So like the “classical� nature of the above ad, the nature of this one is supposed to be about “beauty�. Of course, beauty could not be anything other than a heterosexual mans view of a woman in her underwear, with a bullet wound to the head I might add; that would just be an outrageous suggestion. What a ludicrous idea that the blatant sexualised nature of the ad could have been avoided /sarcasm. But that does tell you something about the people responsible for this particular advertisement and the people they are trying to reach out to (heterosexual male video game players).

Still, I do still maintain that Hitman isnt about violence against women, they simply happen to be the target sometimes. However, I find both the “beauty� and “classic� ads to be bad taste anyway, since Hitman can and has been advertised before without parading dead bodies around, never mind one of a woman in underwear.

Terence McKenna said it best before he died:

"The culture is not your friend."

Terence McKenna said it best before he died:

"The culture is not your friend."

Terence McKenna said it best before he died:

"The culture is not your friend."

Am I the only one who's thinking, "If that were a real corpse, there'd be a messy exit wound and a voiding of the bladder and bowels"?

ShifterCat, I thought the exact same thing! I guess that a clean corpse isn't a turn-off, but shit is just too gross...

Hey, Feministing! I've been lurking at this sight, daily, for the past few months. I just decided that I might as well sign up and contribute.
Yup, this is just another image of women hating to appeal to the teenage boys who share secret fear of powerful women.
Ever heard a song by the craptastic group Insane Clown Posse? They hate "sluts;" love to kill them. I find it unusual that the very thing men often want from women (sex) is the very thing that proves our evil and makes us filthy whores.
I'd like to research this...

Insane Clown Posse... ::shudder::

They were a favorite of the Columbine killers. One of their "songs" is about a high school outcast who murders his teacher...

Lyrics here: http://tinyurl.com/35hsqr

Eh. My favorite movie when I was 14 was Heathers. I didn't kill anybody.

I've played all (i think) of the hitman games through to completion. They're pretty alright. There is never any eroticized violence and the "target" (person you HAVE to kill) is almost never a woman. The required violence is almost always against males.

That being said, I don't have a goddamn clue who gave the go ahead for this ad. I'm very disappointed in the franchise for allowing itself to be associated with this, and I'm going to try to find someone to rant at about it.

In my mind, this kind of advertising is so similar to Ambercrombie ads that show naked teens to sell...clothes? The relationship between the ad and the imagery makes no sense at all. It's just sad.

I wonder if this isn't one of those things that people THINK works, even though it doesn't. Like movie makers who dumb down movies because they THINK people don't want more intelligent selections. I think the public goes for this stuff a lot less than the ad agencies think they do.

As for Insane Clown Posse- my hubby really likes a few of their albums and is constantly finding Christian references in some of their music. I've heard some of their more *ahem* colorful songs and don't enjoy them. But hubby is a progressive feminist type so maybe he just skips that kind of stuff?

Joss Whedon (creator of the Buffy tv series) had an interesting post on women and violence in movies a while back: http://whedonesque.com/comments/13271

Joss Whedon (creator of the Buffy tv series) had an interesting post on women and violence in movies a while back: http://whedonesque.com/comments/13271

Joss Whedon (creator of the Buffy tv series) had an interesting post on women and violence in movies a while back: http://whedonesque.com/comments/13271

I don't know why my previous post appeared three times. I apologize!

moody starr - i completely agree. i think it al goes back to fears of witche, - witches being sexual women that were trying to wreck men by making them deisire the evil women.
what worries me is the comments that the computer game isn't explicitly about violnce against women, as a way to justify the advert. surely it is worse that the ad makers are relying on an image of violence against women to sell the game, as if that is the most marketable image.
if this kind of image is acceptable, it both glamourises and desensitizes against misogynistic violence.

moody starr - i completely agree. i think it al goes back to fears of witche, - witches being sexual women that were trying to wreck men by making them deisire the evil women.
what worries me is the comments that the computer game isn't explicitly about violnce against women, as a way to justify the advert. surely it is worse that the ad makers are relying on an image of violence against women to sell the game, as if that is the most marketable image.
if this kind of image is acceptable, it both glamourises and desensitizes against misogynistic violence.

moody starr - i completely agree. i think it al goes back to fears of witche, - witches being sexual women that were trying to wreck men by making them deisire the evil women.
what worries me is the comments that the computer game isn't explicitly about violnce against women, as a way to justify the advert. surely it is worse that the ad makers are relying on an image of violence against women to sell the game, as if that is the most marketable image.
if this kind of image is acceptable, it both glamourises and desensitizes against misogynistic violence.

sianandcrookedrib, I already put forward my opinions on why I think this ad is unacceptable, but I think the reason why this particular poster is causing a fair amount of trouble is simply BECAUSE its a woman, and not a man. Now I realise Im probably about to be accused of all that "what about teh menz" crap, but bar the sexualised nature of the woman in the picture, how is this any different from the "classical" man, or the "cold" man, in regards to “promoting violence�? It looks to be part of that disturbing trend of trying to make women and violence erotic, I admit, but Im not sure if they actually sat down and specifically aimed for that. She is supposed to represent "beauty" (albeit the "heterosexual male" view of it, even though its one I dont share) so in some respects, it just happens part of the (twisted I admit) advertisement theme. So -and this is the “what about� part- other than the problems above, how is this promoting violence any more than the other posters? As I have said, playing the game I know its not about killing women specifically, but killing your targets, regardless of who they are (though it hardly puts that point across to people unfamiliar with the game). Or should we say “killing men in the video game is fine, but you cant kill any women, because that’s just wrong, it promotes violence against women!�

Basically, I think people need to accept the relation of this particular poster to the ones where its men who have been killed. Im sure they could have had a man in the “beauty� scenario, since I myself have a few ideas of how that could have been done, but I doubt that would be so easily recognised as “beauty� to some of the people this ad is trying to reach out to. So my problems with it are not so much that it’s a woman who is depicted as the victim this time (as it just barely relates to the game, or at least the Hitman games I have played), but that it could have been done without having her in her underwear, blatantly sexualised. But I think thats a moot point anyway, as I already suggested that this advertisement “theme� of viewing the kills probably could have been avoided in the first place, as I have seen Hitman games advertised without it before.

But the Hitman games are mostly about killing your target in the manner that gets you the “Silent Assassin� ranking. This means you kill only your target and not civilians or guards, preferably in the most bloodless, and to appearances, accidental way possible.

I think there are a couple of related but different issues here. Among them:

1. Does culture want to see the sex-violence cocktail at all, or in which contexts? In other words, on a billboard, this would be really objectionable, since it might scare little kids and/or offend some people. On a late night demographic-researched show, or in a gaming magazine, the culture might support it more.

2. Does culture supporting such an image mean culture devalues women to the degree that it likes to see them sexed out and dead especially? You could debate this. I would weigh in "not necessarily", since I think this was more of an opportunity to show a naked woman that *everybody knows isn't really dead* in a genre where men with guns, men playing men with guns is the norm. (This is not to deny the existence of horrific video games that DO go out of their way to let men fantasy roleplay violence against pretend women). That point is really important, and this is why brutal realism wasn't sought at all. It's like halloween. One halloween in particular when I was twenty, my boyfriend and I went as ghosts. I wore a pretty victorian looking tattered white dress, white ghost makeup and hair, and a bullethole in the exact same place on my forehead. My boyfriend wore a tattered suit and the exact same makeup only with a slash across his throat, and we carried the "murder weapons" as props. We weren't trying to glorify anything, we were trying to be scary/funny ghosts, on a night where the genre of ghosts was called for. Similarly, in a genre where shooting pretend people is the game, perhaps a shot person isn't so ghastly, and perhaps to insiders in context, kind of funny, too, since it's obviously an excuse to shamelessly market a sexy woman to promote their product (and again, to clarify--sexy *live* woman *dressed up* as a murder victim) which is why they didn't put a guy in there. This is not to say that shot women are funny. It is to say in a context where everyone is shot, shameless marketing can be funny and/or ironic. (Movie victims are quite different. There is some realism there, in varying degrees depending on the genre. This is obviously not aiming for realism, though.)

3. The issue of whether video games or images of violence against women (which this is, strictly speaking) promote such.

You really have to pull these issues apart to bridge the gaps between gamers saying "the game isn't about violence against women, the woman is sexy" and other observers saying "of course it is, the woman is dead," etc.

"It just happens to be part of the advertisement theme." And this is the problem.
The sexualization of violence is so ingrained that we don't see it. It appears "normal" or as coincidence or just as what is. Truly what is most disturbing is that not everyone who sees this is tuned into just how sexualized violence is. Over the years I have shown an excellent film to my students (Dreamworlds II). Yes, it now looks outdated to them because it was made in the 1990s (I wish this would be redone again). The gist of the film is to show how violence is sexualized in music video. To accomplish this, the videos are shown without the music and viola, the students SEE it. Or, they used to see it. These past two years, the students have not seen it and they merely noticed that the women are all scantily clad. This was the extent of their critique. Now, let me say for those who haven't seen this film, that the sexualized violence slams you in the face. Clips without music are juxtaposed to scenes from the movie The Accused and you don't see much difference. It's not subtle but the effect was lost on the last couple of classes I taught. It had to be explained to them. Therein lies the danger. It's "normal" to pull a woman's hair when you kiss her. It's "normal" for women to be posed looking up at men submissively. It's "normal" for men to throw or push women dressed in lingerie. We need to keep making visible now taken-for- granted sexualized violence.

"It just happens to be part of the advertisement theme." And this is the problem.
The sexualization of violence is so ingrained that we don't see it. It appears "normal" or as coincidence or just as what is. Truly what is most disturbing is that not everyone who sees this is tuned into just how sexualized violence is. Over the years I have shown an excellent film to my students (Dreamworlds II). Yes, it now looks outdated to them because it was made in the 1990s (I wish this would be redone again). The gist of the film is to show how violence is sexualized in music video. To accomplish this, the videos are shown without the music and viola, the students SEE it. Or, they used to see it. These past two years, the students have not seen it and they merely noticed that the women are all scantily clad. This was the extent of their critique. Now, let me say for those who haven't seen this film, that the sexualized violence slams you in the face. Clips without music are juxtaposed to scenes from the movie The Accused and you don't see much difference. It's not subtle but the effect was lost on the last couple of classes I taught. It had to be explained to them. Therein lies the danger. It's "normal" to pull a woman's hair when you kiss her. It's "normal" for women to be posed looking up at men submissively. It's "normal" for men to throw or push women dressed in lingerie. We need to keep making visible now taken-for- granted sexualized violence.

Sorry for the double-post all. It gave me an error message the first time, so I resent. Seems a few of us had this problem.

As a gal who lurks Feministing AND follows video games, I'd just like to point out that this ad was from last year, and the game is already out. When the controversy over this ad was featured on video game sites last year, it was obvious there was a small feminist contingent battling against a majority that didn't see a problem with the ad, and tried very hard to minimize or dismiss the outrage. So I'm not too surprised to see the same arguments cropping up here; they've had a year to practice.

The video game industry is extremely behind the times when it comes to sexism. The best the industry has done so far is try to create a sub-genre of games "for girls" (not "women"), which has mostly been a huge failure in terms of portraying women fairly - most of these games play heavily on gender stereotypes, and they target a generally younger audience. Take for example the game "Super Princess Peach," which featured a female avatar whose abilities were based on her emotions (because, you know how girls are). In a perverse act of translation, the localization team decided to refer to these emotions as "vibes" and place the action on "Vibe Island". I guess they figured their younger target demographic would never notice the double entendre there. (Playing a pink princess who whacks the crap out of monsters with an anthropomorphic umbrella on a quest to save Mario is actually pretty enjoyable, and might even be considered feminist otherwise.)

I could go on for a long time about Lara Croft, booth babes, et al, but I guess my point is that video gaming is a big cultural phenomenon right now - yet its largely ignored by the media and wider culture, except when they condemn the whole practice as dangerous. As such its formed a nice little cubbyhole for sexism to hide away in - as have tabletop gaming, LARPs, anime conventioneering, Sci-Fi fandom and other niche hobbies that draw in women conceptually if not socially. Its a problem that, frankly, drives me clear up the wall - and not in a good, Prince of Persia type way.

It truly is irrelevant whether or not the video game itself has anything to do with vio