Bayonetta: Innovative Advertising or Sexual Harassment Training

Duration: 4 minutes and 10 seconds

Country: United States

Language: English

License: CC - Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives

Genre: Video Blog

Producer: Anita Sarkeesian

Views: 244 (4 embedded)

Posted by: feministfrequency on May 18, 2010

The widely popular video game Bayonetta has had an advertising campaign that matches the on screen sexism of the game itself. In Tokyo a large billboard in the subway invited passersby to literally strip off flyers to reveal Bayonetta naked underneath. The campaign perpetuates and encourages sexual and physical harassment against women, an epidemic in Japan (and many other countries, including the United States).

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♪ Intro Music ♪
Bayonetta is a wildly popular video game
that was released earlier this year in the US
and late last year in Japan for
the xbox 360 and playstation 3.
It sold over a million units in just four months
The game stars a character named
Bayonetta. Its your basic story of a
shapeshifting witch dressed in skin tight
leather who can turn into giant cats
and has a small arsenal of weapons
including whips.
Clip: Bayonetta says "Come On"
♪ Music ♪
And of course she's lost her memories
and there's some evil demands horde
and there's a magical gem of the world
something, something and so forth but
all of that is all besides the point when it
comes to this game
First the positive things about the game
She's a single mother... and...
ummm.... that's kind of it.
So on to the negatives.
She carries with her four pistols
two of which are strapped to her high heeled
boots which provide the perfect
opportunity for her to contorts her body into
pornographic poses including spreading
her legs and doing a little flip in the air
to kill the bad guys
When she lands she does a little
sexy pose for the player complete
with the sound of a camera shutter snaping
But it gets even better because one of her
most powerful weapons involves her
stripping all her clothes off and turning her
hair into an evil demon weapon
fighting machine
Did you get that? The whole taking all
her clothes off in order to use her hair
as a weapon? Because clearly you
can't use your hair to drag demons down to
hell if you're fully clothed.
Predictably, the internet is now infested
with gamers screen captures with various
ways they got Bayonetta naked
As if this pornographic, overly sexualized
animated representation isn't bad enough
The way that Bayonetta restores her power
is by sucking on a lollipop
But I'm not really here to discuss the
overly sexualized adolescent male fantasy
that Bayonetta is but rather talk about
part of the game's marketing strategy
To advertise the release of the game
it's marketing company placed two 6 foot
long banners in Shinjuku Station in Tokyo
This ad features the Bayonetta logo
with a large rectangular space filled
with small cards that enticed passersby
to peal them off and take them home
The cards had a lipstick kiss on the front
and Bayonetta's gun strapped leg
on the inside. Once a few of these
cards were removed it was clear that
Bayonetta was lying naked underneath
She only had her hair wrapped around
her body to cover up her naughty bits
Yes, that's right not only is the game
created to and encourages players to
undress her during game play
because it's basically a choose your own
patriarchal adventure porno fantasy
but now the advertisers are inviting
passersby to physically strip her naked
in the subway station
Instead of being at least a little bit outraged
by this bloggers all over the internet were
celebrating this as an innovative
and successful ad campaign
Women's bodies are constantly used to
to sell products including video games
specifically targeted at young men
but this interactive ad campaign takes
objectifying women's bodies to a whole
other level by asking people to actively
participate in doing misogyny
The ad encourages participation in
physical harassment and this is especially
alarming in context of how women are
treated in Japanese subways
In 2008 in Tokyo alone there were
2000 reported cases of men groping women
and that's only the amount that was reported
In another survey 64% of women reported
being groped on trains and subways
The harassment of women is so bad
that the subway system even introduced
women only passenger cars as a way to
curb this sexual harassment
Women's only passenger cars have been
introduced in many other places such as
Egypt, Taiwan, Brazil and Mexico
and frankly I'm surprised we don't have them
in the U.S. because the levels of
harassment that women face here as well
Harassment is at such epidemic levels that
they've even put up advertising campaigns
and public service announcements in
the Japanese subways. While there's action
being taken to try to curb this behaviour
such as women only passenger cars
and the public service annoucements
right next door is this Bayonetta ad that is
encouraging this predatory behaviour