“…its portrayal of trans characters is anything but progressive. Many gamers have criticized how Cyberpunk 2077 and its developer, CD Projekt Red, choose to fetishize and commodity trans bodies and trans identity.”
That’s… the entire point. There is a big, big difference between how CDPR feels about trans people, and how the Late Stage Capitalist Pigs in Night City treats trans people.
Yes, the advertisements in the game are gross. They’re supposed to be. Human beings, ALL human beings, are treated like garbage in 2077. You were never supposed to look at these ads and be like “Hey, this is totally cool and normal.” If your reaction was “This is gross”, that’s exactly the emotion you were meant to feel. It was supposed to make you reflect upon the culture of the game and realize how messed up and broken it is.
You don’t (I sincerely hope) watch a film and conclude that the views expressed by the villains of the piece are the views held by the actor or director do you? They’re is a reason Ad Agencies in Cyberpunk treat human beings as commodities, because that’s exactly how they view them.
“Obviously, Cyberpunk 2077 presents a dystopian society rather than an aspirational one. Trans identity is treated as a product because everything is a product designed to be sexualized in this future. However, there’s never any contrast established. With other elements of Night City, players see how the commodified image contrasts with the rougher, harsher reality. This is not the case with LGBTQ characters, especially not trans characters.”
One of the main characters in the game is a trans woman, and she isn’t fetishized in any way. There are also some very prominent LGBT characters, and they are treated respectfully as well imo. The person who wrote that article never even played the game and it shows. It’s possible the “reviewers who have played anywhere from 40 to 60 hours have yet to encounter any meaningful trans NPCs.” simply missed the fact that Claire was a trans because no one makes a big deal about it, but it is most definitely mentioned. She has a trans pride flag on her racing truck as well.
Then there’s the fact that you can choose genitalia for your character completely independently from their ‘body type’. You can also choose a ‘male’ or ‘female’ voice artist for V no matter how your character looks. I don’t know of any other game that let’s you have that sort of freedom in character creation. This game let’s you be whoever you want to be in a way rarely (if ever) seen in other games.
“Cyberpunk 2077 never makes an effort to reflect on this fetishization, which erases any possibility of satire or social commentary. If a game presents transphobic advertisements and never addresses these depictions, it just regurgitates and upholds transphobia.”
Cyberpunk treats players as if they aren’t idiots, as is the case with any good satire. The idea that it must specifically call out any bit of satire it’s doing or ‘it doesn’t count’, is insulting and ridiculous. Would “Monty Pythons Life of Brian” have been a better film if at one point the main character had turned to camera and said “This is just like Jesus, get it?”
After the tweet received massive backlash, the social media account responded with a non-apology.
The fact that they used CDPR’s apology as proof that they weren’t sorry it just… come on. Calling it a stretch seems inadequate.
I just think it’s really tacky and gross to do a surface level scan of a piece of media you haven’t personally experienced, put no thought into it, and then use that to get clicks on your website. There are plenty of actual transphobic assholes out there to call out. At the very least CDPR got people talking about these issues, name 3 other games you can say the same thing about.
SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Imagine completely ignoring a canonically trans character to try to dunk on a game. Also softballing that “may or may not” when half of the romance options are homosexual.