I started this series of articles just a few months ago. I have already told you that my intention here is to investigate the role of female characters in gaming. I am not necessarily trying to provide a solution, but I am definitely looking to further unearth the inherent problem. Female characters in gaming cast a negative shadow over the medium and gender perception as a whole.

If you are looking to understand my full intentions throughout this series, I would like to offer you a chance to read my first article. I spend a lot of time in the early goings trying to explain my position. Well, I have done that already. So I decided that here, and with future editions of this editorial, I will begin more quickly than before.

When I finished the first piece, I immediately started to get a slew of reactions from colleagues, friends and readers. Not all of them were positive, of course, but they did spark the types of discussions for which I was looking. And a lot of people started to offer Samus Aran as a solution for the model of strong females in games. She immediately became my next target.

So I spent the last month or so looking into the portrayal of Samus. I will say that through my research I have realized that no other female character in the world of video games carries the same type of love and respect as Samus Aran. In light of that, lovers of Samus and the world of Metroid should realize that this is not an attack on the bounty hunter. I merely aim to use her in order to reach my destination.

Samus Aran

Samus Aran first appeared in the original Metroid for the NES in 1986. She is a bounty hunter that works missions given to her by the Galactic Federation. She consistently tangles with Space Pirates and the alien parasites known as Metroids. But what is most special and identifiable about Samus is her suit. She is covered from head to toe in a wonderfully capable set of armor. It serves as both a defense mechanism and a disguise.



And it's the suit that operates perfectly for my intentions. Players familiar with the world of Metroid and Samus Aran already know that Samus' gender came as a surprise back in 1986. In the opening section of the game, players see Samus as she is above. Completely concealed by her armor. No one that played the game back in 1986 realized that Samus was female once they got a look at her here.

And that's the way the game continued. Until the very end. Much like Princess Peach in Super Mario Brothers, Samus Aran's sexual objectivity is held until the conclusion of the game and hinges on the success of the player. Defeat an entire swarm of alien beasts whilst traversing all types of insanely difficult terrain and the game rewards you with an object of your sexual desire. Don't believe me? Here's Samus as we see her with her suit off.



She is standing there in a bikini. There is simply no way to explain the need for here to wear a two piece beneath her space armor. To further demonstrate my point, look at the Zero Suit.



Revealing? Yes. But it's almost as if Nintendo decided to take a step back and redesign the sexuality of Samus and make it slightly less apparent. Although the model from Super Smash Brothers Brawl depicted above is still highly sexualized, it is not a bikini. The need to back away from the sexualization of a character is immediately checked back into place by a less-and-more revealing version.

I will even take this one step further and try and prove to you that Samus' suit symbolizes an object of phallic power. Okay, wait, do not try and run off so soon. With film theory, the symbol of power is called the phallus. Yes, initially this was used to identify a male's sexual organ, but with film it's used to identify that which makes one character more masculine than another. In Indiana Jones it's his whip. In Star Wars it's Luke's lightsaber. A lot of theorists look at these objects and consider their phallic nature when trying to argue their sense of masculinity. But a Phallus doesn't always have to look phallic. It is merely a symbol of power. Let me offer this textbook definition:

"...the phallus is a symbol of power, of having (note how guns are used in film: guns = phallus = power). The woman has no phallus...the woman is lacking and therefore inferior..." -- Jill Nelmes, An Introduction to Film Studies

Take away Samus' suit and she is powerless. Even more than her suit, take away her arm cannon, and she is powerless. Both mechanisms represent her masculine image, and it is not enough that she becomes weaker when she removes them. She actually wears a bikini beneath all of that masculine strength, as if to say, "without the power, I am only an object of sex."

You can make an argument here that SSBB proves my point invalid. I will accept that Zero Suit Samus is a perfectly powerful combatant. However, the Samus without a suit in the early Metroid universe is powerless. If she did not need the suit, why would she have it at all?

I return to the objectification of Samus. All of this sexualization fits perfectly into my pre-established argument about Princess Peach. In fact, despite her combat capabilities, Samus Aran fits the role of sexually objectified females more perfectly than the victim in SMB. Here's the same quote I used from Laura Mulvey in my initial argument, and understand that it works more efficiently here.

"In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed…Women displayed as sexual object is the leit-motiff of erotic spectacle: from pin-ups to strip-tease…she holds the male look, plays to and signifies male desire. Mainstream film neatly combines spectacle and narrative. The presence of woman is an indispensible element of spectacle…" -- Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"

Consider the moment at the end of the original Metroid when we see Samus without her suit. She's waving at us. She becomes a pin-up, a girl in a bikini. She loses all of her power and is nothing more than a coy, sexual image used to reward the male demographic in gaming.

Now try Google Image searching "Samus Aran" without a search filter. You will find in the first few pages that the internet, no surprise here, harbors a vast multitude of images concerning the sexualized nature of Samus. I will concede, however, that the same trick works with almost every single female on this planet. But it served the cause of Samus Aran no benefit when Nintendo originally threw her up on the screen in a bikini after defeating a horde of alien beasts (I don't mean to blame Nintendo here, but they're the folks with these types of games during the era in question).

Stepping back, I do recognize that Samus Aran does represent a lot of positive strength for females in the world of gaming. She's a strong, confident, independent woman that regularly sets of to do what others cannot. But her flagrant sexualization as a reward for a job well done is something that cannot be dismissed. For all of her strengths and conquests, Samus is still immediately chopped down to an inferior form.

And for all of its shortcomings, the Zero Suit in SSBB is probably the best representation of strength and sexuality for the character. Without her suit in the originals, Samus becomes a waving pin-up. More recently, however, she's become something of a combative vixen. But, as I'll argue later when I tackle more recent games that use this same model, the sexualization of women in gaming still puts them at a disadvantage. Do her breasts still need to be so overtly apparent in the Zero Suit?

I'll close this off by saying that, once again, this series is not finished. It's only started. For those wondering why I'm doing such old games, please recognize that I'm trying to handle this topic in a chronological nature. I do intend to approach more recent titles eventually. For now, I believe a lot of understanding can be found in the roots of gaming.