The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy_ I Link Therefore I Am - Luke Cuddy [117]
According to Beauvoir, the problem with this objectification or glorification of the feminine ideal is that it does not necessarily reflect reality. But it still impacts the reality of women in terms of how they see themselves. And since there is not necessarily a strong link between the Idea and reality, there are many instances when a particular individual is deemed as not living up to the feminine ideal. Unfortunately, instead of questioning the ideal itself, the woman tends to be criticized for her lack of compliance. The result of this is that a woman must either accept her passivity and be regarded as a ‘true woman,’ or she can assert herself, act independently, and cease to be attractive to man. Fortunately, this seems to be a dated attitude, and there are reasons to be optimistic regarding changes in the ideals of femininity and woman in both stories and reality.
Zelda and Reality
There are several reasons why the way women are portrayed in Zelda, and in other story forms, has an impact of the role of actual women in the real world. For one, how the creators of these videogames portray women reveals something about how they view women. It also reveals something about what portrayals of women they think will be most persuasive and compelling to those who might buy and play their games. But most importantly, it reveals something about what feels realistic to the designers and to the players. This is because these videogames strive to mimic reality. The mimicry is not the sort that tries to make something look precisely realistic, but rather to make it feel real.
This phenomenon has been explained by a creator of several games in the Zelda series, Eiji Aonuma. He describes the philosophy of the inventor of Zelda, Shigeru Miyamoto, in the following passage: “Zelda is a game that values reality over realism. In the art world, realism is a movement which faithfully replicates the real world to whatever extent possible. Reality, though, is not mimicking the real world. The big difference is that even using more exaggerated expression can be an effective means of making things feel more real.”84 So games in The Legend of Zelda series do not try to exactly replicate the real world. What they try and do is make a player feel like when they play a Zelda game, they are in a real world.
Although the characters in the Zelda games are not meant to look and act precisely like real people, they are meant to feel like real people. That presents an interesting question: What is it about these stereotypical accounts of women, particularly the maiden Princess Zelda, which feel so real? Is it just that they are familiar figures from literature and other portrayals? Or is it that they represent how women are actually perceived, and what their roles are really thought to be? Perhaps it is something of both. And although the women of Zelda are often stereotypically and ideally feminine, they are not always so.
The Zelda games often portray Zelda as the epitome of the ideal of femininity, but they also contain occasional digressions from it, particularly in the two characters that are revealed as disguised versions of Zelda herself. Sheik and Tetra are far less passive than the other Zelda instantiations, and participate in the action more than the other women in the Zelda games. It may be significant that Zelda is represented as different characters with different names when she behaves in a manner that is more masculine than feminine, but it is still promising that she is allowed the opportunity to take action. If