Debra Goldman's Consumer Republic

S&SI markets the tried and true to teen boys: Misogyny If nothing else, Panty Raider, a new CD-ROM game from Simon & Schuster Interactive, earns attention for its bizarre premise. Thanks to some weird direct-marketing wormhole, a "famous lingerie catalog" finds its way to the mailbox of "one horny alien" on a distant world. It's only a matter of time before he and his buddies have "worn the catalog out." So they gas up the flying saucer and take a road trip to Earth in search of more photos of supermodels in their underwear. Now you the player, in the role of a hapless Earthling called Nelson, must seek out supermodels, strip them to their undies and photograph them for the "testosterone-driven aliens." If you don't come up with the right girls in the specified underwear in the allotted time, the horny bastards will blow up the world. The boys from another planet might have saved themselves a lot of trouble by just putting their names on the Victoria's Secret mailing list. But then, gamers wouldn't have the pleasure of checking out girls sporting silicon-chip gazongas with "X-ray glasses" or winning them with "cheesy pickup lines" and "lures," such as tiny mints (lunch!) and credit cards. "No self-respecting supermodel," the press release adds, "can resist these items." Whatever happened to those nice first-person shooter games in which body parts are splattered across the screen? True, no one dies in Panty Raider--From Here to Immaturity except, the games' critics say, Western civilization. Like moths to a flame, organizations such as Dads and Daughters have gathered to protest the release of the game this month. Fathers, perhaps too familiar with the sexual psychology of pubescent boys, object that the game teaches the impressionable young to treat women as sex objects, feeds stereotypes of girls as empty-headed, passive gold diggers, treats anorexia as a joke and makes light of the "hormone-driven anger" that led to the massacre at Columbine. Now, if you are trying to drum up outrage at computer games, a reference to Columbine is a must. Lighten up, respond the folks at S&SI. Think American Pie or Road Trip. Like those movies, the game is supposed to be funny--although it's hard to locate the humor. But just in case anyone mistakes S&SI for peddlers of soft porn to adolescents, the company tries to bullet-proof the game with that irony-alert subtitle. And it promises the game's "mature" rating will be featured prominently on the packaging and marketing materials. In other words, according to S&SI, Panty Raider is not for 14-year-old boys but for 30-year-old boys who act like they are 14. Judging from a large swathe of contemporary advertising, there is an endless supply of such males. In fact, the notion that an adult could get off on Panty Raider is far more disturbing than its attraction for a bunch of giggling pubescents. Priced at $19.95, Panty Raider is well within reach of the average teenage allowance. And who is better equipped to understand it when the publicity explains the lusty aliens "wore out" their catalog--and we're not talking about maxing out a credit card. A Victoria's Secret catalog, conveniently addressed to Mom, is no doubt being "worn out" in a suburban bedroom somewhere in America even as I type. If Panty Raider is not soft porn aimed at hormone-flooded teens, it is dubious sexual material likely to appeal to them alone. Plus, they can enjoy it on their computer screens, where a lot of them, unknown to their parents, are probably used to seeing it. At least Panty Raider is not a "shooter." Indeed, it's not even first-person. The player takes the role of Nelson, but he is secretly impersonating the horny aliens. Poor Nelson is just a victimized girly-girl, an innocent bystander forced to commit perverse acts against his will. Meanwhile, as the postmodernists might say, unspeakable, uncontrollable lust is displaced onto the evil Other. Whether games like Panty Raider raise boys to treat women as passive sexual toys is an open question. But they ensure another generation grows up in the great American sexual tradition that links prurience with guilt. If sales of the game match the number of hits the promotional video is getting on gaming Web sites, it will be a smash. Still, outraged critics can take comfort in knowing that any boy stupid enough to take his cue on how to relate to real-life girls from Panty Raider will remain a virgin for a very long time.

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Debra Goldman's Consumer Republic

Debra Goldman

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Debra Goldman