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’d additionally encourage Resident Evil franchise’s Ethan Winters to stay his blond head within the oven as quickly as attainable, like Sylvia Plath if she had been an untalented man in a online game.
This animosity would possibly catch you off guard. I admit, I might need an evolutionary concern of ineffectual blond males, like how some persons are afraid of snakes or intimacy. I’m definitely 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 imagine Ethan and James are each able to by accident inflicting dying and veneral illness upon a whole continent.
It’s troublesome for me to pinpoint precisely the place this conviction comes from, however after I have a look at James, sniveling and swoopy-haired with a bit inexperienced jacket, and Ethan, sniveling and swoopy-haired with a bit tawny jacket, I wish 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 be taught extra?
James
- Outfit – military jacket, grey polo, unflattering bootcut denims
- Blond? – sure
- Spouse standing – sick, then useless as a result of he smothered her with a pillow, however kind of “lacking” as a result of James is so psychologically broken by how sexy 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 change 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 dirty rest room to retrieve a pockets (neglecting to clean his arms afterwards)”
- Catchphrase – (upon seeing a fridge) “There’s one thing that appears like a fridge.”
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Ethan
- Outfit – sherpa jacket, most likely from L.L. Bean, grey hoodie, extra denims
- Blond? – sure
- Spouse standing – perpetually lacking, riddled with mildew
- Temperament – dazed, confused, useless
- 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 useless physique) “A useless physique?”
It appears clear to me that James and Ethan are two sides of the identical ineffective coin. Every thing that occurs to them is kindled by their extra fascinating 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 find out how to 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 films and 24-year-old girlfriends, regardless of the soullessness of the entire inconsiderate apply. In her 1993 e-book 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 could 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.” 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 nighttime with empty heads and, sure, they survive their horrors, however with blinders on. Girls by no means get to shrink back from gore.
I do know I’m spiteful, however I feel James and Ethan deserve what they get.
