In Assassin’s Creed 2 you control a new sort of hero. Far from the archetype of asocial doofus who
runs around murdering people, in Assassin’s Creed 2 you’re a young man with a
family, a mission, a mindset. You’re a
rad dude through and through, a real life Italian Playboy for the
Renaissance. That means you’re
interacting with ladies. A lot. Some of these ladies are related to you, but
for the most part, they’re not. They’re
potential sexual conquests, persons of interest, and, occasionally, damsels. Since the trope of damselhood (that is to
say, the projection of object status on to a female-bodied character in order
to remove their agency and effectively utilize them as a quest object in a
narrative world) is notably absent in the other Assassin’s Creed games. So how does this trope of damselhood fit into
Assassin’s Creed 2 and its world?
Well, sadly, it is a bit sexist, more often than not. If we perceive the Assassin’s Creed games as
representations of the worldviews of its protagonists, that makes sense (if
unfortunate sense). Ezio is a young man
in Italy (and eventually an old man who wanders about the world). He defines himself, at least in part, through
his romantic relationships and, as one of the titular Assassins whose shit is
only minorly torn up (relative to Altair, who doesn’t have a life outside of
the order, and Conner, who really doesn’t have any friends who aren’t “murder
buddies”) he’s actually a relatively normal dude. And dudes, even when they don’t mean to be,
reinforce a sexist power structure partially through existing. It’s a thing, and it’s not a pleasant thing
to discuss (or an easy thing to accept) but it’s there. Ezio’s actions can be read as sexist because
they are, sort of: he’s imposing a power structure on women in order to conquer
them. It’s not insidious or cruel, but
it presents a potential sexist reading.
But there’s something going on with Ezio, something that
runs deeper than that. If it was just a
matter of him being a horndog, it would be a simple matter of dismissing him as
a character, of looking at him as an unsympathetic prick. But the reality is that Ezio’s relationship
with damsels is actually given something of an edge. I’m not claiming that his relationship with
anyone resolves the sexism, in part or whole, of his behavior. But I am claiming that Ezio remains unique
among heroes participating in the damselhood trope in that he does not acquire
and retain any of his damsel-objects, and instead, after “acquiring” the female
bodied object character, restores them to their own agency.
Sounds a bit far fetched?
Bear with me.
Ezio’s infatuations, ranging from Christina Vespucci to
Caterina Svorcha, are all historically situated as women of power and
influence. And they are undeniably
placed in positions of distress throughout the game in order to advance the
plot and present Ezio with means by which to exercise agency over other
characters, male and female bodied, who present themselves as obstacles on his
journey. This is classic, even typical
of damselhood and damsel relations. But
in their status as historical figures, they exist outside and beyond Ezio’s
interaction. Though Ezio secures their
freedom and, in so doing, exerts authority over them, in doing so he excises
them from his authority: these characters are removed from the frame of the
game through Ezio’s machinations and they become their historic selves: they
conduct themselves as history demands, outside of Ezio’s desires and will,
continuing to have an impact on the world after meeting him.
In a conventional damsel-in-distress dynamic, agency is
totally removed for the damsel and, upon the damsel’s rescue, the narrative
either concludes, or the damsel is excised from the narrative altogether,
either relegated to a supportive role (IE a vendor or a friendly or helpful
NPC) or altogether absent from the game (secured or forgotten in some secondary
location). In the Zelda games, a classic
example of the damsel in distress trope, the plot centers around the rescue of
the titular damsel, Zelda, by the hero, Link.
Success at rescuing the damsel ends the game: the narrative is that of
male agency overwhelming female agency.
In other games, a damsel once rescued might become a helpful object in
sustained play after a mini-quest, or find herself removed from the game once
her damselhood is no more.
But Assassin’s Creed 2 and its varied offspring eschew this
trope by featuring prominent historic figures as damsels. Ezio, in rescuing them, does not subjugate
their power, but instead removes them from the fetters of a masculine authority
structure. This is still problematic:
Ezio is a male bodied individual who acts as a metaphoric gatekeeper for
feminine agency. But it’s still a step
up from conventional damselhood, a set of choices I’d defend as being
progressive, if not overly progressive.
It is indicative of the problematic relationship between
games and their female characters, of course, that a partial victory like this
can be looked at as at all progressive.
And what makes it much, much worse is that in its final act, during
Assassin’s Creed: Revelation relies entirely on a conventional damsel to move
the plot forward: Sofia Sartor, Ezio’s book keeping babe, becomes a contested
object of desire in the midst of a political power play that Ezio intervenes
in.
Her presence is more than a little unnecessary, and quite
problematic because, unlike Ezio’s other ladies, Sofia isn’t terribly possessed
of agency in the world. Sure, she isn’t
a sexpot and she’s a commendable member of the community (small business owner,
all that) but she’s still a female bodied object in the perception of the
narrative, and she’s presented with this body-status pretty arbitrarily: it’s
through her association with a man (Ezio) that her body status as object
emerges (she becomes a damsel to raise the stakes and to serve as currency in
an exchange for a McGuffin that another character wants to secure from Ezio).
This is alloyed somewhat by her active role in the games
climactic moments, but helpful damsels aren’t a new trope: they frequently
appear in climactic moments in games, and while they present female agency in a
male dominated world, they remain problematic in that they do so through a
filter of male authority. Borderlands 2
is particularly bad in this regard with its treatment of Angel and Lilith. By comparison, Sofia is a woman with her own
mind who makes her own decision. That
that decision is to subjugate herself to a man might be troubling to feminist
scholars who play video games (or people in general) but it is worth noting
that this subjugation is primarily textual: Sofia is subordinate to Ezio in
both narrative and action, but she retains the capacity for action and
decision.
None of this excuses the weak-tea shit that goes down in
Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, nor does it eliminate the sexism pervading
Assassin’s Creed 2 and its many annualized expansions. But it does generate a framework for us to
have a discussion about sexism in games and consider the manner in which body
politics can be responsibly engaged with without eliminating storytelling
tropes that, while problematically manifested in games, are actually quite
prevalent throughout literature and have origins and histories Campbellian in
scope. Games are an easy target from a
sociological perspective: they’re often poorly written, and society continues
to perceive them as a boys club, even as evidence to the contrary emerges and
women like Swift and Raymond raise their hands in a small crowd of auteurs
making interesting shit. That they’re perceived as tokens, not contributors, is
both unfortunate (in that it seems to diminish their contributions) and
heartening (in that it represents a less problematic relationship between sex
and authorship in other narrative forms) but it doesn’t invalidate the progress
that’s being made in games. In fact, it
presents an occasion for us to have a conversation about why and how we use
narrative tropes like damselhood in games, without necessarily dismissing those
tropes altogether.
Because tropes exist for a reason. They make storytelling easy and allow
unfamiliar contexts to feel familiar.
They permit us to explore sociological problem issues in neutral
territory that we all, as readers, feel familiar and comfortable in. But they’re not without their own pitfalls.
Excising their use doesn’t resolve those pitfalls, it empowers them. But a conversation, a conversation
surrounding their use that permits the reshaping or recontextualization of their
application is helpful. It presents a
moment where growth can occur, and that’s a tremendously valuable thing. So Assassin’s Creed, as a series: thanks for
providing us with a framework to have such a discussion. And thanks, Patrice and Jade, for creating
such an interesting piece of game-text: one that is both a joy to interact
with, and a fascinating and multi-layered narrative environment that invites us
(us being pretentious douches) to explore power structures and literary frames
in new and interesting ways.
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