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Flipping the Gender Bit
The games Jenkins wrote about in his essay are primarily console or PC games from the late 1980s and early 1990s. Since that time, graphics resolution in digital games has become more complex—and along with it, the rhetoric of game gender representation. An important case in point is Lara Croft, the star of the popular Tomb Raider series. Although the Tomb Raider games are 3D rather than 2D like the games Jenkins studied, they and other over-the-shoulder action-adventure games are direct descendents of "boy's game" platform scrollers like Mega Man and Super Mario Bros. The obstacle-avoiding, power-up-snatching, fight-and-explore-a-series-of-levels game play is remarkably similar, despite graphical differences. Because games of this type typically feature male characters, as a female lead Lara Croft is in some ways an intervention into the cultural rhetoric of gender. Or is she? "At the time we created Tomb Raider, I don't think there had ever been a good game with a heroine," remarks Toby Gard, the game designer credited as Lara's creator."Most women in games before Lara wore thigh-high boots and thongs."[11] Originally conceived as a cross between riot grrrl icon Tank Girl and British pop star Neneh Cherry, Lara developed into a buxom female version of Indiana Jones. The end result, according to Gard, was "an empowered woman…. Not a smutty sex object, but an inaccessible, gun-toting bitch."[12]
Gard is correct in one sense. Prior to Tomb Raider, there were few female characters that played active roles in a game. Previous characters such as Smurfette in Smurf Rescue and Princess Toadstool in Super Mario were merely damsels in distress, helpless females waiting to be rescued at the end of the final level.These characters are synonymous with the end of the game, acting as passive objects of desire, the carrot held out to entice the player to finish. This remote and powerless female is an archetype that fits neatly into the traditionally gendered space of a young boy's world. The female is structurally acknowledged as a source of desire, but she is not generally present during play, and certainly does nothing so threatening as usurp the leading role from the male protagonist. Tomb Raider offers an alternative game role for players. Lara Croft is a gun-toting action hero, a powerful character that can kick ass as well as any male avatar. But does Lara Croft rise to the level of the "empowered woman" Gard describes? There were any number of ways that a female character might have been visualized, and the character of Lara represents some very specific design choices. Her impractical cut-off shorts and skintight tank top emphasize her waspy waist and enormous breasts. It is true that Lara is not as scantily clad as many other female game characters (such as the whip-wielding dominatrixes of Bad Dudes), but she is hardly the model for an "empowered woman." Lara is a kind of action slut, an adolescent boy's idea of a woman, a digital pin-up girl. This role is literally played out in the many provocative full-page images of Lara published throughout the gaming press since the first Tomb Raider game was released. Lara herself was a trend setter: scores of similar female game protagonists have followed in her wake. How does Lara play into ideologies of gender present within culture at large? Which values does she reinforce and which values does she call into question? As a powerful and playable avatar, Lara challenges the passive role usually accorded female game characters. In fact, a disproportionately high number of women have been consumers of the Tomb Raider games. But as an overtly sexualized representation, she replicates and exaggerates images of women found in other media, images often seen as objectifying and disempowering.
Lara Croft
Smurfette
Princess Toadstool
Lara Croft
The rhetoric of gender is complicated even further when we consider that the representation of Lara is composed both visually and interactively. Beyond her "looks," how does a player's interaction with Lara reinforce a rhetoric of gender? We know from our discussion of the immersive fallacy in Games as the Play of Simulation that players' relationships to game characters are never simple. When a player plays a game, he or she is never merely "immersed" within a representation; through the process of metacommunication, the player is aware of the constructed nature of the character within the larger system of the game. A game avatar is simultaneously both subject and object: on one hand a mask to be worn, and on the other a tool to view and manipulate. Lara Croft plays out this double role to its paradoxical conclusion. In one sense, a Tomb Raider player is the spectator of a grossly sexist female image, even as the same player interactively takes on an empowering female role. Unpacking the complex cultural rhetorics of gender in Tomb Raider, fundamental ambiguities remain. Is Lara a feminist icon or a sexist object? Does she challenge gender stereotypes or reinforce them? Perhaps we can never ultimately resolve these questions. When we consider representations of female characters in other games, similar double-meanings appear:
Ms. Pac-Man is arguably the first game avatar gendered female. Although she is cute, she certainly wasn't given a curvaceous "womanly" figure. Rather, she is nothing more than a feminized version of Pac-Man, designed as if lipstick and a bow were equivalent to being female. Pac-Man, the male gerund, is the presumed neutral identity. Ms. Pac-Man is the marked,special case.
Female Fighting Game Characters also offer active female roles for players to take on. But by and large, these characters suffer from the same hyperfeminization as Lara Croft, even joining her in game magazine pin-ups and posters. The marketing of contemporary fighting games (touting features such as a "breast jiggle" option) emphasize the sexist stereotypes these characters embody.
Samus Aran, the heroine of the popular Metroid series, is a female character that in the original Metroid game doesn't reveal her gender until the end, when she removes her high-tech helmet. This clever design decision reveals the rhetorical presumptions players make about game character gender—many gamers recall with relish their shock when the hero of Metroid was unmasked as a heroine. But why is it only at the end of the game that Samus Aran can "come out" as a woman? Would the play of the game, or the interest of the players, be any different if the protagonist were male?
SiSSYFiGHT 2000 features unusual female characters that are neither passive Princess Toadstools nor sexist action sluts. They are bratty schoolgirls, equal parts cute and ugly, designed consciously as a playful intervention into existing cultural rhetorics of gendered game representation. Despite these feminist intentions, the bratty girls of the game have been criticized as portraying negative images of women, perpetuating stereotypes of catty, gossipy female behavior.
The politics of gender representation in media has been endlessly debated within the academy, the press, and culture at large. The recent visibility of female protagonists in games has only fueled these discussions. The question is, where do you stand? Any design decision you make regarding the representation of gender in your game will be connected to one form of rhetoric or another.There is no single "correct" rhetoric that your game should embody. However, be aware of the rhetorics that your game reflects and perpetuates. The cultural dimensions of games are exceedingly complex; your game should recognize this complexity and do it justice within its design. [11]Katie Salen, "Lock, Stock, and Barrel: Sexing the Digital Siren. In "Sex Appeal: The Art of Allure in Graphic and Advertising Design, edited by Steven Heller (New York: Allworth Press, 2000), p. 148.[12]Ibid., p. 149.
