“The documentary has been sufficiently flagged to be visibly prohibited for under 18s. It's so damn frustrating. It is through this tweet from the video game Youtuber Thomas Versaveau, alias Game Spectrum, that 20 Minutes became aware of his documentary, a priori anything but controversial: Who are the video game players? The description of the video is more explicit ("A history of geek masculinity in terms of gender studies"), and as a user comments, it will rather be necessary to "add a warning" video not recommended for fragile mascu " since they seem to find this content unsuitable ”.
With this video almost two hours and the participation of several researchers or developers (Mehdi Derfoufi, Mar_Lard, Sébastien Genvo, Marion Coville), Thomas Versaveau is interested in masculinity in general, and geek masculinity in particular, in the game video, and by extension in society.
Badass and military heroes, ok, but not only that
From the unfortunately famous GamerGate to recent testimonies of harassment and rape through university research, no revelation: video games are sexist. But why is Game Spectrum interested in it today, in 2020? "The subject of masculinity in video games has interested me for a long time," explains Thomas Versaveau. It's even a bit of the whole Game Spectrum project. Video games are plagued by masculine and virile imaginations. At least in the dominant video game. This creates fertile communities for the far right, with movements like the GamerGate. "
GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Call of Duty, Battlefield … The video game hero has long been, and still is today, the embodiment of militarized masculinity. Even the heroines have for the moment the masculine attributes, the famous "badass". "It's very good, it must be," comments the Youtubeur, "but it must not be that, it must be something else. The last God Of War also shows that we are in a recomposition of hegemonic masculinity, with a hero who remains a mountain of muscles but is also more sensitive, in his relationship to his son. To keep power.
The geek could have been built differently, but not
The documentary especially highlights the concept of geek masculinity, very interesting because more pernicious: "The geek does not correspond to hegemonic masculinity, he suffered from it, he rebuilt himself in a geek counterculture and playful video, a different imagination. So he could have chosen another path, another construction, but no, not really. "We live in a desirable and desired patriarchal society," explains the director. Often we want to get it no matter what. The video game was a space to build itself differently for many people, but in parallel, and in a dominant way again, a geek masculinity of performance, violence, invisibility of women has been built, not more by force but by other means. "
Hegemonic masculinity, a far-right fantasy
It was for example Mark Zuckerberg who, injured by the women, took revenge with his intelligence and created a tool to classify and humiliate them. But it is also the “Sega, it's stronger than you” advertisements that sent the prepubescent teenage boy back to the image of the superbacked guy. That the geek wants to embody these imaginaries that can make him suffer, is it not paradoxical? "It's something of a fantasy," replies Thomas Versaveau. You were educated to be a real man, this force, we always promised you, suddenly, the video game embodies this fantasy. And I say again, it can be fun and fun. The problem is its dominance in the industry. The problem is also that injured, frustrated men, instead of joining the feminist cause, instead of exploring other representations, will sink into hegemonic masculinity. Masculinity closely linked to far-right imaginations. "
Another game is possible
Game Spectrum recalls it several times in its documentary, and also does it in these lines, it is not a question of denouncing the video game as a whole, but the dominant games. "There is an independent scene, another queer, which reinvents itself and lets you breathe," he adds.
And take for example Outer Wilds developed by Mobius Digital and published by Annapurna Interactive: “It is however an open world game like there are so many others. But there is no question of fighting enemies, of conquering territories, but of trying to understand what happened in the ruins of an ancient civilization. Explore and understand how to save this world threatened by the explosion of a super nova. With this beautiful moral at the end: we cannot save him, we must know how to be humble in front of our universe, our environment. We cannot save ourselves, but there will still be an after. As if to say that another video game is possible.
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