Metal Gear Solid Outrage: Boobs of the Patriots

Published on by Josh Bray

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The valiant me­dia strikes again. Where would we be with­out their to­tal­ly not bi­ased and not at all lazy re­port­ing? Well I wouldn’t be writ­ing this now, so there’s that. There was much furor raised this week af­ter Hideo Kojima ( Director of Metal Gear Solid, Zone of the Enders, Snatcher, Policenauts) tweet­ed pic­tures from the pro­duc­tion line of Play Arts Kai’s most re­cent ad­di­tion to the Metal Gear Solid V ac­tion fig­ure set. In the tweet, Kojima point­ed out that the fig­ure for the char­ac­ter Quiet’s breasts could be “pushed and lift­ed” thanks to Play Art Kai’s new method of pro­duc­tion for these PVC made figures.

 

Sections of the out­rage ad­dict­ed press latched onto this tweet, along with fem­i­nist crit­ic Anita Sarkeesian’s say on Tumblr, to start push­ing a nar­ra­tive that will sound fa­mil­iar to many read­ers. All with­in a cou­ple of days, a pile of ar­ti­cles dropped on the net about Quiet’s ac­tion fig­ure and all were trum­pet­ing the same lines. That this is sex­ist, it is ob­jec­ti­fi­ca­tion (ob­jec­ti­fy­ing an ob­ject no less), it is child­ish. They take Kojima’s claims that the char­ac­ter Quiet’s style of dress will be ex­plained in the sto­ry with dou­ble dos­es of eye rolling and skepticism.

 

Not one ar­ti­cle (that this au­thor could find by time of pub­lish­ing) ever both­ered to men­tion that Quiet’s ac­tion fig­ure is not the only one from Metal Gear Solid V to fea­ture “mal­leable” or “squeez­able” forms of pro­duc­ing ac­tion fig­ures. Did one ar­ti­cle men­tion that Snake’s fig­ure is made with the same method? Not that I could find. Did any ar­ti­cle men­tion this was a new method of pro­duc­tion in­tro­duced by Play Arts Kai to re­pro­duce more re­al­is­tic feel and ar­tic­u­la­tion in fig­ures? Not. One. What, do these peo­ple not like ob­sess­ing over Snake’s chest and booty as much as they do Quiet’s? And they call oth­er peo­ple ob­sessed with breasts. Sheesh.

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Jed Whitaker’s piece on the mat­ter from Destructoid. Yes, sans pic­tures, that is the WHOLE “ar­ti­cle.”

In their haste to jump on the out­rage band­wag­on and throw more of their read­er­ship un­der the bus, the en­thu­si­ast press de­cid­ed to ei­ther ped­dle an ig­no­rant and mal­formed re­sponse to this “sto­ry”, or will­ing­ly chose to be out­raged and stand on their soap­box to shell out a de­cid­ed­ly bi­ased view­point when re­port­ing on this.

Go look at those ar­ti­cles. Notice how many of them are la­beled as “news.” How can these ar­ti­cles be news when there was not one bit of ac­tu­al leg­work done to see if this was the only case of a MGS V char­ac­ter be­ing “ex­ploit­ed” with this new form of ac­tion fig­ure pro­duc­tion or not? How can you in­fer your opin­ions about the char­ac­ter of Hideo Kojima and the fans of a prop­er­ty in a piece and not la­bel it opin­ion? I am stand­ing tall on my mea­ger soap­box to pen this, but I am not go­ing to try to pre­tend this is even news.

This is a not-roversy. This is lazy, one-sided “re­port­ing” be­ing done by out­lets and peo­ple who ei­ther just want to roll around in all that hot click­bait out­rage ac­tion, or peo­ple who want to sell you their ide­ol­o­gy but are not coura­geous enough to term it just their viewpoint.

The only “news” here is how in­cred­i­bly far some peo­ple will start reach­ing to push a nar­ra­tive. This is old news, though, as the not just the en­ter­tain­ment press is im­mune to bla­tant­ly one-sided nar­ra­tive pushing.

But there’s no need for stan­dards though? AMIRITE? (Editors note: Writer had to re­cov­er from a se­vere head-desk in­ci­dent at this point.)

Here’s the gist of where I am go­ing. Mere min­utes of re­search re­vealed to me that Quiet’s fig­ure was made with a new pro­duc­tion method at Play Arts Kai. That same re­search showed that Snake’s mod­el used the same method and fea­tured a soft butt and chest. The lazy re­port­ing from the en­thu­si­ast press was com­bined with opin­ions about how some peo­ple feel about Quiet’s phys­i­cal ap­pear­ance, with every men­tion of Hideo say­ing, “once you rec­og­nize the se­cret rea­son for her ex­po­sure, you will feel ashamed of your words & deeds” be­ing met with prover­bial eye rolls and sar­cas­tic replies. Sure, don’t give any cre­dence to some­one who has built char­ac­ters for al­most thir­ty years now.

Was Play Arts Kai sup­posed to use their new pro­duc­tion method for at­tempt­ing re­al­ism and not ap­ply it to fe­male fig­ures? Were they sup­posed make just the breasts hard like some botched bud­get 90s plas­tic surgery? Wouldn’t this im­ply pref­er­en­tial treat­ment of women? FOR FACKS SAKE, I AM TALKING ABOUT AN ACTION FIGURE.

This isn’t news. This piece here is the only thing I have to say about this not-roversy. I may be on my soap­box, but at least I have the gump­tion to say so.

I am not say­ing that a con­ver­sa­tion and ap­praisal of how women are por­trayed in me­dia shouldn’t hap­pen. I just take of­fense at ma­nip­u­lat­ing non-news to cre­ate controversy.

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Josh Bray

Josh has worked in IT for over 15 years. Graduated Broadcasting school in 2012 with a fo­cus on A/V pro­duc­tion. Amateur pho­tog­ra­ph­er with a pas­sion to make things work… by any means nec­es­sary. Editor-in-Chief and do-er of tech things at SuperNerdLand
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