On Nuns and Headbutts

I wanted to briefly give my two cents in relation to the recent controversy over the latest trailer for Hitman: Absolution.

I don't want to link the trailer, because I personally can't much stomach seeing this particular style of violence* when it's directed towards women.  Is that a double standard?  Yes.  Is there a reasonable rationale for why I would harbor this double standard that would imply only the vaguest notion of hypocrisy to the most chiaroscuro of black-and-white thinkers?  Of course.

But for those of you who haven't already seen the trailer, it features a gang of nuns trying to assassinate our beloved Agent 47... but surprise surprise... those aren't really nuns, they're hyper sexy dominatrix nuns!  The majority of the trailer depicts the lot of them being brutalized by Agent 47 in the typical fashion you would expect from a master assassin protecting himself.  The imagery is very graphic, yet presented in a real-world style that keeps any element of over-the-topness from easing the blow of the imagery.

Now, I'm a bit late with my comment, and there are many others who have spoken about this before, so I'll be brief.  Basically I just wanted to say: IO Interactive, if you really wanted to make your trailer controversial and shocking, you should have had those nun assassins be actual nuns and not fetish models.  I mean, this industry has seen enough slut-shaming sexualized violence and tear down of powerful women that this is just another drop in the bucket.  But actual nuns getting messed up... that would be a new one.


* Yes, there are different "styles" of violence exhibited in various examples of pop culture, some of which are easier to tolerate than others.  I know most of you would know that, but I feel there are many people who would require such an explanation.

Let's Continue...

A year ago I created this blog with the sole purpose of staying "active" in a literary sense during the summer.  The concept was to combine my love for gaming with a generalized idea that games could develop into so much more on an artistic and sociological level.  However, I soon found that while I was working on this blog, I was less likely to be working on writing fiction, which is more align with my true passions. 

But now, I feel more or less like returning to this blog from time-to-time, as my old remedy of simply formatting my musings on pop culture into Facebook status updates is, once again, no longer efficient.

So after a year of additional experience, how shall I best start again?  I think the best answer would be to return to my first aim when I started this blog: explaining where I think some games may in the future evolve.  Before, I had trouble wording what I wanted to say, but now I think I have a better grasp on it.