GLaDOS as Victim: the Anatomy of a Monster
Content Warning: this blog post involves discussion of sexual assault and rape.
When I think of classic video game antagonists, there’s always one who lingers in my mind. Her taunting monotone voice making fun of every mistake, all listened to while reading the graffiti of “the cake is a lie” is burned into my memory. GLaDOS, the monstrous machine of Valve’s Portal, is an interesting monster to explore in our series because of her role as both monster and victim. GLaDOS’s design as monster is massively complicated. To get at her monstrous heart, we need to understand both her design and her history.
GLaDOS’s design went through a variety of options, one being an upside-down version of Botticelli’s Birth of the Venus. The developers decided to, instead, focus on the mechanical device which was given a “delicate robotic figure” to echo her femininity as well as her power. In fact, to quote, this combination “conveys both GLaDOS's raw power and her femininity”.
In this short developer commentary, we see the complicated conception of femininity which is embedded in GLaDOS’s figure. There is an implicit boundary drawn between powerful and feminine. A purely feminine figure cannot have “raw power”, and one with power cannot be feminine. The inherent struggle in the design team was to combine the two forms which conceptually seems – to them – impossible. Female figures are needing to be something other than powerful. Soft lines and curves are needed to follow the conception of “ideal” beauty, and this ideal beauty is considered the antithesis of power. Our previous blog post on Khloe Kardashian focused on the difficulty of the female body, and how the power is necessarily on the outside patriarchal force which controls the female body.
And this is where the backstory of GLaDOS connects with her design to reveal some interesting and complicated notions of where feminine combines with monstrous.
GLaDOS’s history is revealed through unused audio files, digitally dug out by intrigued players. GLaDOS was built by Aperture Science Laboratories CEO Cave Johnson, who had hoped to eventually upload human consciousness into a machine. His assistant, Caroline, was highly intelligent and worked well alongside him. Caroline as a character is noted as being beautiful, feminine, but most importantly, smart. She was unmarried, and her role as scientist and as intellectual meant she was ultimately untouchable by men. Cave Johnson described her as being “married” to science. While this statement may be an attempt to paint a picture of her as independent and important, it’s also a statement mired in mistreatment and misogyny – it’s ultimately tied to conceptions of what it means to be a woman. To be a woman is to be ultimately touched by men, and if they are not able to be touched by men, her role is suddenly put into question.
The story of GLaDOS is that Caroline’s consciousness was put into the machine. Most likely, this choice was done against her own will. In one of the unused audio files, you hear Caroline repeatedly saying she does not want something. An internet rumour circulated that the voice actor of Cave Johnson, JK Simmons, refused to record the second half of the audio because he felt it was a rape scene. Portal writer Erik Wolpaw tried to set this rumour to rest in an interview with GameSpot. He said it was “insane” that anyone would think they wrote a rape scene into Portal 2. But… is it so insane?
The groundwork was laid for Caroline to be resistant, perhaps very firmly against, putting her consciousness into the robot. Cave Johnson insisted she would be placed within GLaDOS regardless of her own feelings on the matter. In one, he claims Caroline will be his successor, that she won’t want it, but they should do it anyway. This order resulted in her consciousness being put into GLaDOS.
This means her body was forcibly taken from her. While it may not have been done sexually, it was still done. While it may not have been a sexual rape, it was an action done to her against her will which removed her own sense of body. It was a direct assault on her being, her sense of self, and her relationship to her body. And this was all done against her consent. In most definitions, this is rape.
Her form is not just a depiction of “feminine power”, but also a quiet depiction of assault. While one inspiration for the developers was noted as being the Birth of Venus, a blogger saw something a little different. They noted the model of GLaDOS actually looks like a woman hanging upside down in bondage.
Image drawn of GLaDOS as bound woman from Game-ism blog.
Both the words from the developers themselves, which tried depicting her as Birth of Venus and feminine robot, and the model of GLaDOS as bound woman, emphasize the need for freedom within GLaDOS. Her bound form is an obvious demonstration of feeling enslaved, trapped, and the crave of freedom. More implicit is the role of the feminine power as being a form of entrapment. But what makes GLaDOS “feminine” has always been her captivity – the soft lines of her design is a hint to her entrapment. Even the developers saw the raw power of the robot as the only way in which an intelligent, independent woman could be considered powerful. Her captivity inside the robot the only way the independent and intelligent Caroline could find a position of power – her role as monster is only possible due to her role as victim.
GLaDOS is only GLaDOS due to the loss and captivity of Caroline. Her role as victim, either of sexual assault or some other form of bodily rape, is what makes her monstrous. Its also a quiet rape, one that is silenced behind unreleased audio files and misunderstood perspectives of writers.
GLaDOS’s monstrosity is as the unsilenced woman. In contrast to Chell, the silent protagonist who quietly moves through the puzzles of Portal, GLaDOS speaks. She voices her distaste at her position and role, and the company which stripped her of her agency. And her role as the vocal survivor, one who fights for her position to be recognised – sometimes to a violent end. What Portal is implicitly telling us in the role of GLaDOS as monster is that the silenced victims are the protagonists, and the vocal victims are the monsters.