Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Lara Croft: feminist icon or cyberbimbo? On the limits of textual analysis

Kennedy, Helen W.

Authors

Helen W. Kennedy



Abstract

As the title suggests, the feminist reception of Lara Croft as a game character has been ambivalent to say the least. The question itself presupposes an either/or answer, thereby neatly expressing the polarities around which most popular media and academic discussions of Lara Croft tend to revolve. It is a question that is often reduced to trying to decide whether she is a positive role model for young girls or just that perfect combination of eye and thumb candy for the boys. It is also increasingly difficult to distinguish between Lara Croft the character in Tomb Raider and Lara Croft the ubiquitous virtual commodity used to sell products as diverse as the hardware to play the game itself, Lucozade or Seat cars. What follows then is an analysis of the efficacy and limitations of existing feminist frameworks through which an understanding of the kinds of gendered pleasures offered by Lara Croft as games character and cultural icon can be reached. I will begin by analyzing Lara primarily as an object of representation – a visual spectacle – and then move on, considering the ways in which the act of playing Tomb Raider as Lara disrupts the relationship between spectator and "spectacl

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Dec 1, 2002
Deposit Date Jan 31, 2011
Publicly Available Date Nov 16, 2016
Journal Game Studies: International Journal of Computer Games Research
Print ISSN 1604-7982
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 2
Issue 2
Keywords Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, Feminism, Textual Analysis, Computer Games
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1075566
Publisher URL http://www.gamestudies.org/0202/kennedy/
Related Public URLs http://www.gamestudies.org
Contract Date Nov 16, 2016

Files

Lara_Croft_Article.doc (78 Kb)
Document





Downloadable Citations