Gustave Caillebotte: Hors d'Oeuvre. 1881-1882. Public Domain.
Delicious: Emily's Holiday Season And Feminism Theory
Introduction
Delicious: Emily's Holiday Season (Game) is a time management game developed by "Zylom Studios and published by Zylom" (Delicious). I am reviewing Delicious: Emily's Holiday Season, one of nine Delicious games. It is a fun game which has a female protagonist, Emily. My criticism examines the game's story that appears to be in touch with a modern woman's point of view but still has the character pigeonholed into old-fashioned women's roles.
Summary
Emily arranges a holiday dinner for her family at a mountain lodge, but when she arrives, she realizes how understaffed and out of touch the restaurant is. She was hired to help improve the restaurant by its owner, and thus begins the game. From spider webs that need cleaning to a menu that needs improving, it seems Emily is the only one who can make the changes required for improvement. Each chapter in the game has goals that must be met and decorations to hang, to make the restaurant appear festive and the customers happy.
She meets two men in the game. One is a greedy business owner and the other, an insecure hotel worker. Both men try to win her love and by the end of the game she must choose which, if either of the men, she wants in a relationship.
Background
The Feminist movement is about equal rights. It is not about women being more important than men, but about being given an equal opportunity between the sexes. When women graduated from college in the mid-sixties, it was the tradition that the only appropriate careers for women were at home as a wife and mother, or in the workplace as a nurse or a teacher. As an example, Nancy Grace Roman, considered the mother of the Hubble Telescope, was NASAs first chief of Astronomy.
Roman faced the problems of being a woman in the sciences in the mid-twentieth century like most other women. She was discouraged from going into astronomy by people around her and was one of the very few women in NASA at the time, being the only female in an executive position (Mother).
In video games, the "research on game content has revealed that stereotypical masculine characters dominate video games and that those characters are generally White" (Jansz). With the Delicious series, the protagonist is female, giving an opportunity for those who are looking to play a game from a female point of view a new option.
Argument
Emily's character is constantly bombarded with activities, some of them the natural part of running a restaurant, but many burdens she carries come from the men in the game asking her to help them. She doesn't set boundaries as women in traditional roles have done for generations. She agrees time and again to do the work for them on top of what she already has to do to make them happy. It is apparent by her inability to say no that she has been taught to please, and she doesn't want to disappoint anybody. While Emily is running a restaurant, which could be a powerful career for her, it seems, in this game, she doesn't run her life. She comes close to failing with every new chapter of the game, and it is because of the detours she takes making the choices she does to do everything asked of her by the men in the game.
Conclusion
While Delicious: Emily's Holiday Season is a fast-paced and fun adventure, the typical female role of being subservient and overgenerous to others is not a great example to young women of how to become independent and active in their adult life. It is a good step in the right direction to have a female protagonist, but putting her in the nurturing role instead of making her responsible for what is important to succeed in her career is equivalent to the two steps forward, one step back kind of progress.
References
Delicious (Series). (n.d.). Retrieved May 2, 2015, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delicious_(series)
Game. Delicious: Emily's Holiday Season. (2009, November 18). Retrieved May 1, 2015, from http://www.gamehouse.com/download-games/delicious-emilys-holiday-season
Jansz, J., & Martis, R. G. (2007). The Lara Phenomenon: Powerful Female Characters in Video Games. Sex Roles, 56(3/4), 141-148. doi:10.1007/s11199-006-9158-0
"Mother of Hubble Always Aimed for Stars." Voice of America. (2011): n. page. Web. 5 Nov. 2013. <www.voanews.com>.
A word about this piece from the author:
For an assignment in my class, "Script Analysis and Criticism," I chose to write about Feminism Theory and Gaming because the overwhelming majority of games are written for males. As a woman who loves gaming, and has played games from the early Atari console, to Playstation, to PC/Mac platform games, I wanted to share some of my knowledge of games I have played and how women's roles have evolved, or not, in the marketplace.