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Watching the trailer for Konami’s Silent Hill 2 remake, I’m reminded that not solely do I hate protagonist James Sunderland and wish him to die, however I might additionally encourage Resident Evil franchise’s Ethan Winters to stay his blond head within the oven as quickly as doable, like Sylvia Plath if she have been an untalented man in a online game.
This animosity would possibly catch you off guard. I admit, I might need an evolutionary fear of ineffectual blond men, like how some individuals are afraid of snakes or intimacy. I’m actually disturbed by Christopher Columbus, who Scientific American described in 1893 as being “with blond beard and hair, clear complexion and blue eyes.”
Like Columbus, who was famously too silly for spatial consciousness, I consider Ethan and James are each able to unintentionally inflicting loss of life and venereal illness upon a whole continent.
It’s troublesome for me to pinpoint precisely the place this conviction comes from, however once I have a look at James, sniveling and swoopy-haired with a little bit inexperienced jacket, and Ethan, sniveling and swoopy-haired with a little bit tawny jacket, I need to begin handing flyers out about why chemtrails are turning the frogs blond. It feels true. I really feel it in my core.
Why don’t we do a side-by-side comparability and study extra?
James
- Outfit – military jacket, grey polo, unflattering bootcut denims
- Blond? – sure
- Spouse standing – sick, then lifeless as a result of he smothered her with a pillow, however form of “lacking” as a result of James is so psychologically broken by how attractive he’s, he forgot
- Temperament – shattered by angst, bewilderment, terminal horniness
- Revealing moments – as informed by the Silent Hill wiki, “he leaves his automotive door open, doesn’t swap his flashlight off when hiding from Pyramid Head; reaching right into a gap in a wall for a second time after being pricked by one thing, plunging his unprotected hand into a grimy bathroom to retrieve a pockets (neglecting to scrub his palms afterwards)”
- Catchphrase – (upon seeing a fridge) “There’s one thing that appears like a fridge.”
G/O Media might get a fee
Ethan
- Outfit – sherpa jacket, in all probability from L.L. Bean, grey hoodie, extra denims
- Blond? – sure
- Spouse standing – perpetually lacking, riddled with mould
- Temperament – dazed, confused, lifeless
- Revealing moments – getting his hand chainsawed off in Biohazard and saying nothing, getting his fingers bitten off in Village and simply saying “Shit,” getting his hand sliced off in Village and simply saying, “Oh, shit!”
- Catchphrase – (upon seeing a lifeless physique) “A lifeless physique?”
It appears clear to me that James and Ethan are two sides of the identical ineffective coin. Every part that occurs to them is kindled by their extra attention-grabbing sick, lacking wives, and but they get to be the protagonists. They get to navigate the marsh and the mist, waving their weapons like lollipops, shouting “What was that!?” at each bump within the evening.
It’s not honest. They’re bumbling and so they by no means earn a solution.
I can perceive being unequipped for the gross, mentally and bodily traumatizing ordeals each James and Ethan undergo—I wouldn’t precisely know react to my spouse coming at me with a chainsaw, both—however I want their video games would give me something to admire or empathize inside these males we spend hours enjoying as. You may’t coast on luck and boyish perplexity on a regular basis, as a lot as Silent Hill and Resident Evil insist in any other case. Although, I suppose males like Leonardo DiCaprio have been doing it for many years and we nonetheless reward them with extra motion pictures and 24-year-old girlfriends.
In her 1993 ebook New Maladies of the Soul, in exploring “who nonetheless has a soul,” psychoanalyst and critic Julia Kristeva writes that “held again by his aloofness, fashionable man is a narcissist—a narcissist who might undergo, however who feels no regret.”
“When he’s not depressed,” Kristeva continues, he’s “a physique that acts, usually with out even the fun of such performative drunkenness.” Hm, identical. However bland James and Ethan, blond, good-looking, and regrettably uninteresting, are prime examples of what occurs when males aren’t inspired to nourish their souls. They fumble at the hours of darkness with empty heads and so they survive horror, however with blinders on. Girls by no means get to shrink back from gore.
I do know I’m spiteful, however I believe James and Ethan deserve what they get.
