WARNING — SPOILER (AND LENGTH [AND RANT]) ALERT
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Note: My apologies in advance for the informality of the following post—my Feminist outrage at this game, as it presents its scarce female “characters” (if so flat a group of plot devices they may be called), can no longer be contained.
As the plushie accompanying this post illustrates, for being existentially-hungry shadow monsters, those little Heartless are pretty damn cute. When Sora commits seppuku and loses his heart, thus becoming one of the yellow-eyed buggers, it’s a nifty sequence where you get to run around Hollow Bastion in that form—being that, rather early on, you see a human transformed in a subtly grotesque manner into one, the player, if only for a moment, is goaded into wondering how such a victim behaves and feels inside their new body (if it can be called that—remember, Sora’s wooden sword goes right through them, as do most non-epic weapons [think Squall’s gunblade]). And you get to see just that.
Perhaps it’s just my personal style of gaming, but when transformed into a new body, I’m inclined to try that shit out: immediately, I figured out what areas I could explore, what I could or could not interact with, and generally if the form offered me any new abilities. I loved seeing my little monster bob around adorably, antennae groping a world drenched in light to paint some (probably) horrific mental image to the dark creature—what disturbed me, however, was how curtailed my actions were. I could run, or jump, or look cute, and it angered me that I could not attack, or melt into the ground, or any of the other things I had to deal with as a human. But like I said, the game is pretty clear that you’re meant to just run to one room, and then it’s over, so maybe I’m being slightly excessive with this; I’m inclined, by pride or honor (to the integrity of the game), to believe otherwise.
(I could analyze for days the importance of the scene, and in the future I just might—but for now, bigger fish are to be fried in the pan heated by my searing anger…)
It comes as little surprise to have Kairi, whom the player has just saved through their sacrifice, bring Sora back to his body (I would say “back to life”, but I feel like the implications of doing so would reach too far for a single blog entry to handle). For once in the game, Kairi, the only halfway important female character (Daisy and Minnie just wait in the castle, being regal, the princesses are imprisoned for most of the story, and Aeris, Yuffie, and Selphie…well, they mostly just hang out at home and serve as mini-bosses), steps in to actively aid in the quest. Not by fighting, not with spectacular magic (remember, Aeris had the White Materia, even if she didn’t get to use it while alive), but by hugging the disembodied Sora-monster while the enemies close in to murder them. Then, poof! he’s back, and fends them all off from his apparently defenseless friend.
It’s a cute, classically chivalric moment. It also serves to further the fairly blatant misogyny of the game. The Disney Princesses, as I alluded to before, serve primarily as plot devices—they’re not fleshed out, they don’t participate in any action (save when they’re being kidnapped), and for the most part, they hang like decorations in Hollow Bastion, in an eerie homage to Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” (or so I like to think—I recognize it’s something of a stretch, but I’m pretty sure there’s a solid argument there that I just don’t care to spit out for the sake of length here). In a game where the raison d’etre is to reinterpret children’s stories with darker and grittier themes and occurrences, why would the opportunity not be taken to make these characters more action-oriented and involved with the collapse of their home-worlds? There’s a part of me that strongly wants to believe that, given that most of the princesses’ abductions are not shown, that they indeed put up a fight and fought bitterly against their attackers…but I feel like a game that will cut to pivotal plot moments between villains would gratuitously present those heroines kicking as much ass as they can.
Back to Kairi and Sora—in a scene not long after his revival, the two share their experiences: Sora is lost in the darkness, and Kairi, being spiritually linked (ostensibly by love), calls out to him and shows him the way to the light. The only power Kairi, one of the few active women in the game, possesses is one of nurturing—no magic, no special item only she has the power to use; nothing except a stereotypically quintessential female gender role being played out. Afterward, Kairi proposes she join the heroes in their quest, which Sora immediately denies on the grounds that it is “too dangerous” and that she’d “just get in the way” (not direct quotes, but close enough). I am sick of that shit, when a male protagonist forbids a female protagonist from joining him on his save-the-world quest. I recognize that the logistics of fleshing out Kairi as a party member is difficult, and it’s not unreasonable, that late in the game, to deny the player another character in the party—but to justify it by claiming she is weak and a burden is going out of the way to further cripple the already-subverted feminine presences.
I realize now, in retrospect, that I have been ignoring the one female character made playable—Ariel. And though I’d love to dismiss the oversight by pointing out that she’s half-fish, I will address her in this manner: out of all of the misogynistic feminine archetypes presented throughout Disney canon, I still find Ariel the most insulting. The overarching message of The Little Mermaid is that, in order to fall in love, you have to radically alter your identity—in this case, change your fucking species. Yes, there’s certainly themes regarding the unifying power of love and how its force overcomes all boundaries, but in the end, what you have is a female character giving up the mer- part of her (crypto?)zoological identity to just become a human -maid. For the portion of the game she is available for your team, she is naïve, easily manipulated, and ends up nearly getting her father’s kingdom lost (like hell she could take on a gigantic Ursula on her own in-game!)—basically, the exact same as the character in the movie.
Thank god Kingdom Hearts II at least gave us Mulan.
Once again, thanks for bearing with me through my improperly edited rage—it saddens me greatly that the game balks at the opportunity to empower otherwise submissive female icons, and I’m desperately hoping there’s an enormous, redemptive scene waiting for me that I’ve just forgotten over the years. Let’s all hope…
In closing, I’d like to summarize my flat, powerless, decorative female argument by presenting three of the stained glass surfaces the Awakening scene takes place on. I’ll let them speak for themselves.
