When Eidos’ Life President Ian Livingstone made his keynote speech at GCA 2009 in Singapore, he did bring up his digital baby girl Lara Croft in all this, stating that she has an undeniable sexual edge and she help rally the girl power movement. However, I am curious on his stance with this year’s possible new icon in rallying girl power yet again. To be specific, I speak of Bayonetta.

During the past few weeks we had international journalists talking about the going-ons of Platinum Games’ locally-released action game Bayonetta. For those not in the know, Bayonetta is an action game featuring a witch whose clothes and heavy attacks are made out of her magical hair. She also does suggestive poses mid-fighting, come up with innuendo-laced one-liners, and has a thing for lollipops (which she also licks suggestively).

Not surprisingly, there  are people who either love or hate this; no middle ground here. Some decry it as pandering to the male demographic, if the above description of the game wasn’t any indication. However, Leigh Alexander pointed out in her Gamepro post on Bayonetta being more empowering than exploitative. To quote an excerpt from the article:

“As gamers, we don’t always pick up a controller and immediately expect that the character on screen will be a representation of ourselves — if we did, then it’s possible that the overblown macho male characters we see in games with impossible strength and unbelievable musculature would offend male gamers. We must not assume that female players are so fragile that they view a stylized female body as a personal affront.

To prohibit a character like Bayonetta, and rush to cover her up in disapproval, is a rejection of her particular brand of femininity. Why do that? Because she makes men uncomfortable? If men feel uncomfortable with Bayonetta, maybe that means she succeeds.

As a woman, I haven’t often been satisfied by female character options that effectively boil down to “the same thing as a man, just with breasts and a ponytail.” Thanks to its innovative approach to the idea of female power, Bayonetta is the first action game heroine that’s made me directly conscious of how cool it is to be a girl. I already know that women can do all the same things men can. This time, I get to see a woman do plenty of things men can’t.”

And you know what? She’s right. Just watch all of the cinematics in the game for proof. At first, you might see this as an off-kilter sex-laced version of Devil May Cry that negatively portrays females in a bad light. You see Bayonetta squatting down pointing her guns shooting angel faces like as if she’s shooting bullets out of her “sacred place”, doing a dance number while killing angels and seductively licking her lips, or even swinging onto a pole (like them pole dancers in American strip clubs) knocking down enemies around her. And that’s not counting her abnormal body proportions.

Yet while all of this suggestive chaos is going on, we forget that Bayonetta is a calm, strong, and capable woman who’s out of every man’s league. Everything she does, she does with an air of confidence. She whips out combos as she would dance steps. She dodges with a grace of a cat. Hell, she even transforms into a friggin’ panther with skull-shaped flowers growing out of the floor of every step she takes. While shooting with her gun, she does a catwalk. She shoots out holes with a shape of a heart, and also complains about her hair getting all dry. She doesn’t even flinch when a bus comes flying close to her, and even slips in a coy wink at the camera before delivering the coup de grâce onto the big bads of the game. While also exaggerating her femininity and being blatant with symbols usually associated with femininity (the lipstick, the air-kisses, the aforementioned cutscenes mentioned above), she taunts and sends a message to her enemies: you can look, but you can’t touch, because I can kick your ass.

Come to think of it, those were the exact words I was told during my high school education on the birds and the bees, except for the “kick your ass” part.

Segueway aside, once you look past all of the smoke and mirrors and intended c**kteasing, all we see now is someone who should have told Lara Croft to shove it when the tomb raider started being pushed around by marketing to sell her off as a sex object for male gamers and not bother with what makes the tomb raider “click” in the inside. All that supposed negative portrayal with the suggestive shots? Its hyper-sexualization is meant to be unrealistic; almost everything in Bayonetta’s gameplay defies some grounds of logic much like its cousin Devil May Cry does. So within that gameplay and narrative context, it clicks and it works.

Put her into that list of most positive female portrayal in videogames that’s been collecting dust for a short while. Beyond Good & Evil’s Jade, Perfect Dark’s Joanna Dark, Prince of Persia’s Farah and Elika: meet Bayonetta.

Despite my stance in this, I do have to bring this question up: does Bayonetta’s postures and action make you cringe and feel uncomfortable about sex? Are you embarrassed when you have roommates and family walking by when you’re in the midst of summoning Bayonetta’s giant devil beasties which renders her almost nude? Or do you feel that what she’s doing is deliberately empowering female protagonists in games using her feminine wiles and icons?

Also, wouldn’t it be nice if any tech/games journalist in Singapore lay out their 2 cents on this? I did a google search for “bayonetta singapore” and all I got are a bunch of WTSs/WTBs. We can do better, can’t we? I’m just saying…