I have never been sexually harassed. Walking down the street, I have never had a stranger say anything suggestive or complimentary about my appearance (though one night last summer a homeless man in Midtown Manhattan did sneer “Nice get-up” as I passed by in yellow shorts and a bright blue polyester shirt with a huge collar).
So when I first tried Hey Baby, a new Web game that takes aim at catcalling and its practitioners, I thought it was not meant for me. Developed by the New York artist and producer Suyin Looui, Hey Baby at first appears to be a self-consciously ridiculous revenge fantasy for women who have felt oppressed or threatened by sexual attention or commentary from men. Think of “Death Wish” with a woman walking home from work in the role ofCharles Bronson.
Yet over several hours my initial alienation and annoyance gave way to a swelling appreciation of Hey Baby, not as a game but as a provocative, important work of interactive art as social commentary. The people who should really play Hey Baby are men, even if you have never said a word to a woman you didn’t know on the street.
The game, playable free at heybabygame.com, is quite simple. As in any first-person shooter game, you use the mouse to look around your surroundings, and the keyboard to move, while holding a big gun. In this case your surroundings are a small cityscape that appears intended to be generically American (though several of the storefronts are drawn directly from small businesses on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which happens to be my neighborhood).
In most first-person shooters, your enemies — the things you shoot and kill — are zombies or aliens or terrorists. In Hey Baby, men approach you and say something, and you can either blow them away, leaving tombstones inscribed with their affronts, or you can say, “Thank you, have a great day,” and the man turns around and leaves in a cloud of floating pink hearts.
The men may say something like, “I don’t mean any disrespect, but you’re beautiful,” “Can I help you, miss?” “Excuse me, do you have a boyfriend?” or “God bless you.”
Or they may say something like “I like your bounce, baby,” or yell obscenities and other unprintable comments, or threaten imminent assault.
There are other women also walking around, but you cannot shoot them. You also cannot shoot the men until they actually say something to you.
At first I found myself somewhat offended. In Hey Baby a man says, “Wow, you’re so beautiful,” and that is license to kill him. It should be obvious that a video game in which you play a man who can shoot only women would be culturally unthinkable, no matter the circumstances.
But as I played on, I came to realize that it is equally unrealistic and absurd to suppose that saying, “Thank you, have a great day” is going to defuse and mollify a man who screams in your face, “I want to rape you,” with an epithet added for good measure.
And that is the point of Hey Baby. The men cannot ever actually hurt you, but no matter what you do, they keep on coming, forever. The game never ends. I found myself throwing up my hands and thinking, “Well what am I supposed to do?” Which is, of course, what countless women think every day.
So where is the line between saying “Hey, sweetheart” and “Baby, I could blow your back out”? Is there one?
I doubt any noninteractive art form could have given me as visceral an appreciation for what many women go through as part of their day-to-day lives. Just as I have never been sexually harassed, I have never accosted a strange woman on the street. After playing Hey Baby, I’m certainly not about to start.
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