5 Secret Feminist Easter Eggs You Didn't Notice in 'Portal'
#2. A Guy Comes Along to Offer Help, Then Gets Rough When the Relationship Goes South
When you first meet the dim-witted Wheatley, he seems like a typical comic relief character. He wakes you up, bumbles you towards a failed escape attempt, and generally acts like a benevolent moron who means well despite his chronic ineptitude. He's endearingly pathetic. He doesn't even have arms.
Aw.
Both thanks to and in spite of his help, you overthrow GLaDOS, and Wheatley takes charge of Aperture. The story could have ended there, but instead, meek little Wheatley gets drunk on power and turns on you. In the final confrontation, it's revealed that his change of heart wasn't quite so sudden -- Wheatley taunts you with the fact that five other test subjects died horrifically while trying to overthrow GLaDOS. You were just another stooge in his plans.
Now, there's nothing remotely sexual about your interaction with Wheatley, outside of some very strange and definitely unofficial artwork that we've seen. But the dynamic they share hits many of the same beats you'd find in a toxic relationship. Imagine you're a normal girl who's down on her luck. A nice guy turns up with all the right answers, or at least an honest attempt at them. He wants to help you, so you follow him for a while, and sure enough, things start to look up. Life isn't perfect yet, but you're not in that rut anymore, and that's partially thanks to him. But the moment you start to succeed on your own? That's when you find out he was using you.
In fact, the trigger for Wheatley becoming evil isn't the sudden influx of power; it's GLaDOS giving you all the credit for defeating her. Wheatley immediately gets paranoid and jealous (with lines like "You know what you are? SELFISH! I've done nothing but sacrifice to get us here! All you've done is BOSS ME AROUND!"), and when his frustration boils over ... he gets physical. In this case, by punching you with his new giant robot appendage.
Many a relationship has been ruined by the introduction of giant robot appendages.
And just to drive the parallel home, when you encounter Wheatley again hours later, he's calm and content to ignore the previous incident. At least, until you cross him again, at which point he becomes even more cruel and abusive. But in the end, you deliver him the ultimate insult -- proof that you didn't need him after all, and worse, that he was actually holding you back from success. And then you exile him to space. Because hey, it's still a video game.
But that brings us to ...
#1. The Game Employs Subtle (But Important) Symbolism Throughout
We'll sidestep any more talk of how your gun shoots vaginas, in the name of keeping this classy. In fact, we'll even ignore that the game is peppered with names like Cave and Aperture, and the potential implications thereof. Instead, we want to talk about the Moon.
Which, as Portal 2 taught us, is in space.
What does the Moon have to do with femininity, we're going to assume you're asking? Well, look around you -- there's a reason
menstrual cups are called "moon cups"
and snack bars for women are called Luna bars
(complete with a Moon symbol in the logo) and new-agey treatments for women have words like Moon Goddess
in them. Ask any mythology enthusiast or new age type at your local health food store (if you're not sure who's a new age type at a health food store, it's everyone), and they'll all tell you the same thing: The moon is a symbol of womanhood that's been associated with dozens of goddesses throughout the ages. Also werewolves and crazy people, but mostly lady gods.
Now, the recordings of Cave Johnson reveal that Moon dust is responsible for the liquid goo that you can zap portals onto throughout the game. Initially this just seems like general backstory, but as Cave's ranting progresses, it's revealed that life finally handed him some lemons he couldn't blow up --
the Moon dust was poisoning him. The patriarch of Aperture choked to death on symbolic femininity, which we believe is called irony.
"I just hope my hairline is waiting for me on the other side."
But then the payoff/punchline comes at the conclusion of
Portal 2.
At the end of your fight against Wheatley, it looks like all is lost because there are no surfaces to hit with a portal. But then the ceiling caves in, you see the night sky, and bam: Your only option is to take a leap of faith and
shoot a portal onto the goddamn Moon itself.
Fuck you, physics!
The scene is staged to seem implausible -- the fact that it works is surprising, even though you're the schmuck who tried it in the first place. You pray to the lunar goddess, and she answers. GLaDOS, a woman, is put back in charge of the facility, and she saves your life, while Wheatley is left to his fate. The End.
So what you have is a game that puts the player into the body of a woman, placed in a powerless position in which you are tormented by another woman before finding out both of you are products of a system created by some powerful (and ridiculous) males. You have to overcome abusive father figures and male companions to ultimately take control of your own life.
And to think, all of this came from a puzzle game remembered primarily for its cake memes.
Michael Vincent Bramley writes comics like the successfully funded Kickstarter project
'Sherbet', which is about a lesbian version of Sherlock Holmes from the future who solves paranormal mysteries.
For more video game messages you may have missed, check out
5 Classic Games You Didn't Know Had WTF Backstories
and The Insane Stories Implied by 4 Misleading Video Game Covers.
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