Firewatch, Precarious Manhood, and Walking Simulators
I recently read an article by Jennifer K. Bosson and Joseph A. Vandello in Current Directions in Psychological Science, titled "Precarious Manhood and Its Links to Action and Aggression." In their article, Bosson and Vandello suggest that, across social scientific disciplines, researchers "portray manhood as a social status that is both elusive and tenuous" (82). Whereas womanhood is conferred by adjectives and consistent states of being (real women are kind and nurturing, we love babies and Starbucks drinks, etc.), manhood is a precarious status that must be earned through action (so, verbs: real men grill, earn money, drive sweet cars, protect their women, etc. Suffice it to say there are massive, flashing scare quotes any time I type the phrase "real men" or "real women"). Because of this adjective/verb disjoint in our social perception of masculinity/femininity, Bosson and Vandello argue that men "link manhood with action and, further...perceive aggression and aggressive displays as effective means of restoring manhood" (82).
Bosson and Vandello then did that experiment. They "threatened some men's gender status by making them perform a stereotypically feminine hair-braiding task; other men performed a gender-neutral rope-braiding task...then all of them donned boxing gloves and hit a pad that measured the impact of their strikes. Consistent with the idea that manhood threats evoke physically aggressive displays, men who had styled hair punched the pad harder than did those who had braided rope." In a follow-up study, they had men just do the hair braiding task, gave *some* the opportunity to punch the bag, then measured anxiety. "Men who punched the pad after the hairstyling task exhibited less anxiety than men who did not punch, suggesting that aggressive displays can effectively down regulate men's anxiety in the wake of manhood threats. Thus, these findings provide converging evidence that men use displays of physical aggression to restore threatened manhood" (84).
If men do and women are, if masculinity is constructed by acts and femininity is constructed by states of being (which is, I'm sure, an egregious simplification, and also what about Judith Butler and also Queer Theory and that's a whole other post I really need to do because Bonnie Ruberg), BUT presuming all those ifs, then it makes a lot of sense that walking sims would be be a feminized form, a queering of traditional game design or game practice. If games are about living out a fantasy life of doing heroic acts, the kind utterly unaccessible in our late capitalist officescape of impotence, then walking sims reestablish an anxious homogeneity of *not* doing. One can't win or lose a walking sim most of the time, one can't *do* anything, one just is. It's a feminine rather than a masculine construction of existence.
Firewatch relates to all this in that it's an incredibly masculine walking sim (rugged, outdoorsy nature! man survives in wilderness!), with a main character whose masculinity is constantly under siege. The game begins in the late 1970's. Henry meets Julia at a bar, hits on her by asking if she's a student, and she laughingly responds that she's a professor. Soon, the text tells you, "You are Julia's boyfriend." This kind of subtle, passive emasculation (You *are* her boyfriend, you don't *do* anything) continues through the prologue, which is conveyed text-adventure-style, with story bits followed by one or occasionally a choice of links you must click to continue. Julia gets her dream job offer but it would require her to move cross-country; Henry has the choice to "convince her not to" or "agree if she commutes back and forth," but no choice to support or move with her. When Julia playfully takes pictures of him, he's given the choice to "pose and flex like He-Man" or to "frolic like a Victoria's Secret model." Those are Henry's only choices: perform cartoonish masculinity or seductive femininity. He's forced to react, not to act; to be, not to do. And affirming his masculinity through action becomes increasingly fraught as he's faced with the misery of her early-onset dementia, forced into a caretaker role, and eventually offered the opportunity to escape to nature, to watch for fires in the wilds of Wyoming with his pickup truck and his six-pack of beer.
The way action works in the main section of the game mirrors this sense of impotence, of being rather than doing. Like many walking sims, Henry's action is constrained mostly to walking around, exploring his environment, examining objects, and speaking to his superior, Delilah, over a radio in Quick Time Events similar to those in The Walking Dead series by Telltale Games (which shares 2 developers with Firewatch). The player is frustrated like Henry, unable to act, agentially constrained to the tasks Delilah assigns (another female authority figure who flirts with him and bluntly tells him "your job is whatever I say it is.")
Henry, and the game, respond by inventing action where there isn't any. Like in Gone Home, the player is led to believe there's a deep, dark, government conspiracy/murder mystery occurring in the half-mile radius around Henry's watchtower. Delilah eggs him on, but Henry (and you, dear player!) is the one inventing a mystery for himself to solve heroically. His actions are still constrained—Henry never finds a sword or a gun he can shoot—but the story takes on a fascinating, paranoid, utterly unnecessary edge. No one was ever in danger; no one needed saving; Henry just needed something to do.
