portal and feminism - chell!

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I usually wouldn't post fanart as "official title art," but I love this drawing. It's absolutely Chell: pissed off, determined, smart and tough. I also like that she's not sexed up or cuted up. Also, a Chell screencap from the game is 100% uncanny valley shit.


Okay, so that was more than a day. Mainly cuz -- well.

1) I didn't know where to begin!
2) I went back and replayed both games, Portal 1 and 2, so it was all fresh in my head before I began.

Now that I've finished playing both -- JUST NOW, in fact, like 10 min ago -- I'm back! But #1 is still true. Nonetheless, Kai made the very good point that a lot of times if you don't know where to begin you should just start with the first thing that pops in my head, so I'll try that.

So.

Hmmm.

I guess I'll start with the plot itself and the characters. I think even within the scope of the game, there's a lot of feminism -- or rather, feministic themes. It's not at all a game that shrills at you or clubs you over the head with Girl Power. But those themes are definitely there, and underpin the entire plot. So let's start with the protagonist.


Chell

Stripped down to generalizations, Chell's journey runs like this: she wakes up totally beholden to a system that cares very little for her as a person. She is instructed to perform one task after another. She complies, and receives empty promises and formulaic, meaningless praise for her efforts. She also proves surprisingly adept at her job, and as she outperforms expectations over and over the system begins to turn against her, setting her up to fail while ensuring maiming and death if she should fail. Finally, the system attempts to murder her -- at which point she rebels against the system, breaks out of it using her own wiles, neutralizes the head honcho (it's worthwhile to note Chell never actually kills anyone) and escapes.

Curiously, her story almost doubles itself from Portal 1 to Portal 2. The overall arc isn't so much an arc as it is an ascending spiral -- retreading much the same ground, but progressing. In the first game, the story is more simplistic and obvious. GLaDOS -- or perhaps more precisely, Aperture Science -- plays the role of dictator and oppressor. Chell runs through increasingly dangerous rooms; GLaDOS eventually tries to kill her; she eludes GLaDOS, neutralizes GLaDOS, and escapes.

In the second game, Wheatley fills the role of dictator/oppressor. It's Wheatley that wakes her stasis and urges her into the facility in the first place, and Wheatley's instructions that Chell obeys for the first part of the game. Even after GLaDOS reawakens and takes Chell hostage again, Wheatley makes cameos to urge her to do as told while promising to get them out of there.

Ultimately, just as before, the dictator/oppressor never really makes good on his promises -- Chell does all the work, mentally and physically, and the minute true power is in his hands, and the minute Chell becomes a threat to that power, he turns on her and attempts to kill her. The second half of Portal 2 essentially parallels the first game: we see Chell rebelling against Wheatley, eluding him, neutralizing him, and escaping. However, there are two notable differences:

1) Chell forms an alliance with GLaDOS this time against Wheatley, and

2) In Portal 1, even after having escaped, Chell follows instructions scrawled on the wall by a mysterious "Ratman" that lives in the bowels of the facility. In Portal 2, Ratman is long dead, and Chell is -- for the first time in the series -- genuinely independent and acting on her own will. Wheatley is unaware of her for much of the second half of the game; GLaDOS, interestingly, seems to trust Chell to do what she does best and survive. Although there are prerecorded messages from Cave Johnson to establish backstory and further the plot, Chell's not doing anything because someone's telling her to, but because she wants to. It's also significant to note that the path she chooses for herself leads, finally, to genuine freedom.

Now, while neither game is absolutely in your face with the feminist rhetoric, I think it's pretty easy to see the thematic parallels. Replace Chell with "a woman" and the system with "modern male-dominated society" and you've pretty much got a feminist journey from oppression to self-actualization and independence.

I think it's also entirely important that -- particularly in the second game -- the voices directing Chell about are exclusively male. Even while GLaDOS is in control, she spends most of her time taunting Chell rather than actually providing any direction. Furthermore, the one true alliance Chell forms is with a female entity -- against what my women's studies professor would have called the male hegemony.

All that said, Chell, despite being "you", is actually the less well-rounded and interesting character in the game. So let's consider GLaDOS ...

... next time!

4 comments:

kai said...

EEEEE *clappyhands* Moar portal rant! :D

I love that you referred to Chell's journey as a 'spiral', since 1) the spiral shape is very commonly associated with femininity, particularly in paganism, and 2) literary feminine journeys often are cyclical, treading similar ground but always progressing.

Also! The fact that the themes are so much more overt and expanded in Portal 2 than in Portal 1 makes me wonder if the symbolism happened almost by accident and when post-creation discourse started up, the designers decided to really run with it. If so, then kudos to them. But I do wonder if it was intentional from the beginning!

What you wrote about how Chell starts out (ie, dependent on a seemingly indifferent but actually very [and increasingly] hostile system) was very sad. And starkly analogous. :\

I think it's interesting that Chell is so alone in this game. There's really no other humans, male or female, to judge her for being independent and rebellious -- traits that society usually hamstrings in women with the very effective But What If You Make Someone Unhappy control mechanism. With only artificial intelligences to contend with (ones with awakened personalities or not), Chell is free to rebel against a hostile system because she literally has nothing to lose and everything to gain. The sad truth is that in the nuances of Real Life, even women in situations where they are threatened with mental and physical destruction do not have the same freedom to escape.

Though I suppose in a way, that's echoed at the end of Portal 1. As soon as Chell gets out, the system drags her back in. Huh.

Anyway! This Downer(tm) has been brought to you by It's Past My Bedtime and also by Poh-tay-toes.

Damon said...

I think! The whole feminist slant was probably mostly unconscious/accidental in the first game. I think they definitely set out to make a nonstandard game -- they replaced the usual he-man protagonist with a female, and not even a sexed up, third-person, lara croft girl but just a woman. In a baggy orange jumpsuit. With bare feet. And bedhead. AND GRAY HAIR. And then they also replaced the guns with a portal device, and the usual Evil Male Villain/EvilSexy Female Villain with this very ... passive-aggressively homicidal AI that ultimately has no human form at all.

But yeah. As for the massive feminist subtext -- I think that was something they consciously decided to run with in the second game. Cave Johnson, Wheatley, and all the rest of the oppressive male figures weren't even remotely on the horizon in Portal 1; they were definitely put into Portal 2 deliberately.

So. Kudos to the writers!

Unknown said...
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Unknown said...

I wouldn't say Chell never killed anyone. She definitely tried to kill the various personality cores she threw in the incinerator and while she came back, GLaDOS repeatedly states that Chell killed her.
Also, I don't really see Wheatly as a dictator until the second half of the game. Sure he was the instigator of the plot but Chell is a mute character and so we needed someone to talk and he was actively trying to help her. He was just also a massive idiot and a sphere almost incapable of movement. He did go mad with power though so points for that.

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