Conan the Sexist Creep

Anita Sarkeesian and her team at Feminist Frequency have spent the last few years discussing "representations of women in pop culture narratives,"  particularly through a series of great videos documenting a range of tropes and other sexist trends, particularly in video games.  I love these videos and, while they are very compelling, somehow I always thought "yeah, there are some creeps out there, but most people aren't THAT bad."

Then I found myself watching Conan.

I don't usually watch Conan, but the rabbit hole that is YouTube led me to the show's "Clueless Gamer" segments.  In these segments, the show's host Conan O'Brien "reviews" new video games with a friend/staffer and occasionally a special guest or two.  The segments are basically product placements, but since Conan isn't a gamer, his reactions to the games add a "humorous" entertainment factor.  Unfortunately, what was intended as light entertainment left me feeling very creeped out as a female viewer.  After pretending that the segments' rampant sexist comedy was fine, I have decided to  document the phenomenon in damning detail.  I have included YouTube links (with start times) for nearly all my examples, so enjoy the creepy sexism in full!

Documenting the Sexism

As of this writing, there are 29 Clueless Gamer segments.   Not all games lend themselves to sexist comedy and (thankfully) 13 of the segments (Michael Phelps: Push the Limit, Atari 2600, PC Horror Games, WWE 2K14, AT&T Stadium, Watch Dogs, Call of Duty Advanced Warfare, Mortal Kombat X, Halo 5: Guardians, Doom, Far Cry Primal, UFC 2, and Mario Kart 8) are basically free of sexist material (but not free of sickly violent material).  Keeping the Mario Kart 8 review free from sexism is a low standard however.  Actually, the Mario Kart review involved the losers having penises drawn on their faces, so fail I guess. . .  Penis-drawing aside, Conan still managed to introduce sexist material into reviews for several games you'd think would be safe: 

• Conan finds a female non-player character (NPC) in a leadership role intriguingly attractive but "a little bitchy" in his Kinect Star Wars review.
• Conan closes out the Minecraft review with some homophobic humor.
• Conan suggests that Batman would be emasculated by his loss to Wonder Woman in the Injustice: Gods Among Us review. (Bonus points for feminizing the co-host with a lacy satin eye mask for comic effect).
• Conan finds humor in invading women's personal space in the Resident Evil 6 review.

While I might describe these preceding examples as casual sexism, Conan's video game reviews also demonstrate larger trends discussed by Anita Sarkeesian and Feminist Frequency.  For example, several of the reviews demonstrate the Women as Reward trope when Conan expects to earn sexual rewards after completing in-game tasks.  After killing a bunch of zombies surrounding the female NPC in Resident Evil 6, he argues, "I just saved her life, right?  You'd think she'd sleep with me."  Similarly, in the Skyrim Elder Scrolls review, he starts a quest hoping for a sexual rewards and is clearly disappointed when the NPC doesn't lead him to the bedroom.  When she offers to teach him about trading instead (the point of the quest) his crestfallen response is, "That's not what I wanted."  He then complains about how unreasonable and unfair women are when it comes to providing sex.  Finally, after spending most of his The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt review trying to have in-game sex (more on this below), he is practically orgasmic when finally winning graphic sexual rewards for in-game quest and boss-battle successes.