The deconstruction of the Beautiful Figthing Girl through the Pygmalion archetype. Analysis of NieR Automata (2017) from a feminist poststructuralist perspective
Análise de NieR Automata (2017) a partir de uma perspectiva pós-estruturalista feminista.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12795/Ambitos.2023.i59.11Keywords:
Beautiful Fighting Girl, Otaku, NieR Automata, Video game, CyborgAbstract
Described by Saitō Tamaki in his essay Beautiful Fighting Girl (2011), this archetype corresponds to a series of patterns specific to Japanese fiction. From a Lacanian perspective, the author unravels the psyche of the otaku, tracing a structure where the barrier between fiction and reality are blurred through the magnetic field of sexuality and the hysterization of the subject towards fictional figures. Although, by definition, they are female characters who intervene in the course of their work and struggle to fulfill their will, these heroines perpetuate codes of fechitization stemming from Japanese heteropatriarchal culture. Thus, and by means of this paradox, outside the feminist post-structuralist currents of the West, characters oriented towards the desiring male gaze are created. However, Taro Yoko, in his video game NieR Automata (2017), exhibits characters that escape these canons, imposing a model closer to the socialist feminism of Donna Haraway's A Cyborg Manifesto (1984). Due the popularity of the Beautiful Fighting Girl in Japan and, by extension, in the West following recent neo-Japonisme waves this research is intended to serve those designers of videoludic narratives seeking feminist representations appropriate to contemporary postmodern discourses. To this purpose, an exhaustive analysis of the work's components and the symbolic contraposition of its elements will be developed.
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