What Do You Think of the 'Hitman' Ad? 152
GamePolitics brings up a topic well worth discussion, the ad for Hitman currently making the rounds in gaming magazines. Their question is: Sexy or Sexist? From the article: "Her well-kept body lies on a bed of gold satin sheets; her pose is deliberately enticing -- until you realize there is a bullet hole in the middle of her forehead. Then you notice the pool of blood spreading around her pillow. At at first glance, however, the blood seems to be just more accessorizing; it matches her lingerie and high heels. Regardless of your reaction to the photo, one thing is abundantly clear. The ad itself has nothing to do with the game its pimping. Nada. Zippo. Just visit the site for Hitman: Blood Money, and you'll see what I mean." What do you think?
Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Sexy or Sexist? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's neither.
hrm... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's just more "Shock Advertising" (Score:4, Insightful)
The result is the individual game does OK, but the market as a whole stagnates because normal people don't want to be associated with such violent games.
Re:hrm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Who gives a fuck?
In a world with famine, disease, tyranny, rape, murder, etcetera, we have people concerned more with TV, Video games and their own righteousness, than with the actual suffering of others. If the Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, Jewish, or whatever the fuck god[s] one believes in takes more comfort in his/her/it/their followers indignation at make believe situations than real ones, I would be quite shocked.
Focus on reality and there is no need for the acrimony toward fantasy land.
[/end rant]
Doesn't Sell Me (Score:3, Insightful)
The Anti-Hitman Thing Annoys Me (Score:5, Insightful)
In the Hitman games, you play a stealthy killer. Now, so far, I've only played part two (it's the one that is out for Gamecube). The point of the game is that you have a target, you get to the target a sneakily as possible, kill him/her and then sneak out again as sneakily as possible. In part two, you even have the option of knocking people out with cloroform if you need them out of the way and they aren't your target. In other words, unlike a lot of action games, where your goal is to rack up kills, you purpose is just to take out one target without anyone knowing you did it. (I found the second level of part two to be very tough, any pointers?) You get scored on this, the more sneakily efficient you are, the better you do. (In other words, heading in with guns blazing is a way to get a bad score.)
Anyway, the AD isn't intended to be sexist, indeed I think the argument against the AD that I'm seeing is that it should have been sexist.
I.e. if it was a male character, dead in some museum in front of some spectacular work of art and they used "Beautifully Executed," there would have been no controversy for this effective AD campaign. So, the problem is, the AD campaign was insufficiently sexist, not that it was too sexist. Or do people think anyone would have raised such controversy about the other two ADs?
Re:hrm... (Score:3, Insightful)
The interviewer asked him "how could you kill all those people?"
He replied, "Well, there's a trick to it. You have to hold your elbow like this otherwise it gets sore."
Most of your neighbors have the potential to be concentration camp guards under the right circumstances. There is tremendous pleasure in murder and rape, and all that they really lack is the opportunity. It's only a thin veneer of civilization that separates us from our demons; the idea that that very civilization can be stripped away without consequence is the worst sort of idiocy.
Re:hrm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, I do not, in fact, agree that a complicated hack to add nudity to GTA will result in an inevitable slide into moral anarchy, but I think that you have yet to show that getting upset at GTA prevents us from say, doing more to prevent domestic abuse. My fault with those who protest so loudly such things is that they have confused the symptoms with the disease. I submit that stopping all wars, poverty, tyranny, etc. is a task that is made difficult for the same reason that we human beings have a propensity to seek out violent or explicit imagery. The reason is that humans are naturally destructive, and must be trained well if they are to exhibit virtue towards others. As such, the time spent railing against these various artistic ills would be better spent by creating new ideals to inspire people to a life of virtue, and in so doing, hopefully make a positive impact against the ills that cause suffering in the world today. However, there is no reason, as such, that the endeavor must be delayed until those wasting their time on denouncing symptoms are made to direct their energies elsewhere. Rather, we can all begin both collectively and individually to model and practice virtue today instead of waiting for the tomorrow when our neighbors shall do likewise.
Re:Sexy or Sexist? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing sexy in the picture for anyone but necrophiliacs.
On top of this, if you disregard the hole in the forehead, it is also quite tame from the ad/sex/sells/violence perspective. Just compare it to Dress To Kill [yttermera.se] ads from the Wallis campaign of the mid-90es. That is before even thinking of the Kronenburg advert that got banned by the ASA. That is also before even looking at the kind of ads perfumes are putting for EU market only (Opium with the Naked Sophie Dahl ad being just one example)). They selfcensor themselves and do not print them in American magazines so that they do not have to deal with the Bible Belt dwellers and other Evangelical Talebans.
Nothing to see here, move along...
Nobody would have talk about this if... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't see what they mean (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, you can have all the violence you want, if it's directed towards men. It's actually seen as 'better' if a woman is attacking men. Remember that Madonna music video where she and an old woman drove around and ran over men? It was three minutes of Y-chromosome roadkill. No one said shit about it. But if it had been a man running down a woman (even just once) it would've made the news.
I'm all for equal rights - and if you too think woman should be treated the same as men, do what I do: treat them the same as men.
Violence against woman is as violence against men - there is no difference. And if you think there is you're sexist.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)